


The Lonely Sea and Sky

by samyazaz



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Mythology, M/M, Selkies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-27
Updated: 2014-05-25
Packaged: 2018-01-17 04:16:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 53,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1373599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samyazaz/pseuds/samyazaz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grantaire once swore that he'd never set foot on the shore so long as there was a drop of ocean left to swim in, but when his fellow selkies start going missing, he sets aside his own distaste for the people of the land in order to come up and find out what's happened to them. He doesn't account for meeting Enjolras, however, or his passionate group of friends who are very concerned about the dwindling population of the local "seals", and the poaching that they're sure is taking place. When Enjolras seizes upon Grantaire's pelt as his prime piece of evidence, Grantaire has to figure out how to get it back before it's too late, and he ends up trapped on land forever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The force of the surf propelled him up and tumbled him through the sand. It left him beached and winded, twitching from head to tail as the wave receded, cold and wet and alone.

He dragged himself farther up the beach, hating the effort. Here, he was ponderous and ungainly. His body was nothing but a hindrance, and the salt air made his flesh crawl. He thrashed onto his back and raked claws across his chest, digging into until they caught and the fur split open down his stomach.

He pulled and twisted, scraping his back against the sand until he'd shucked the pelt off and came spilling out of it in a tumble of pale, naked skin and unsteady limbs.

When it was done, he lay on his back in the sand, gasping. The sun burned too bright. His bare skin prickled beneath it, unprotected. He needed to get up, find shelter, find clothes. 

He wanted to throw the fur back on and disappear into the waves. He wanted to go home. He already hated it here.

The threat of the sun compelled him, finally. He rolled over and got his knees beneath him, grabbed up the pelt and shook as much sand from it as he could. With one hand planted in the beach, he made to push upright—

—and found himself staring into a pair of sharp, angry eyes, framed by hair the color of the sun itself. He froze, heart pounding, while the young man's scowl deepened and he folded his arms across his chest. _"What_ do you think you're doing?"

His voice was lost. He tried to speak, but managed only a dry rasp.

The young man's mouth flattened into a disapproving line. "What's your name?"

He cleared his throat. "Grantaire," he said, testing his voice. The sounds came harsh and awkward at first, then easier. "Call me Grantaire." It was what the others called him, or near enough. It was as close as he could manage with this limited human voice and the air all around, shaping his sounds in strange and unexpected ways. He needed the water, to do it properly.

"What are you _doing?"_

"Swimming." It's the obvious answer. Grantaire pulls his shoulders back, pushes the pelt still dangling from his hand behind his back. He didn't even have a chance to tuck it away where it could stay safe, and he hates this boy for it. He wants to bare his teeth. He wants to have his claws back.

The boy's mouth stays tight and disapproving. "Skinny dipping is illegal on this beach."

"Arrest me," Grantaire suggests, and strides past him.

It always works. Humans never know what to do with someone whom they can't intimidate.

This time, the other man's hand whips out and grabs him by the wrist, locking him in place. He's staring down at Grantaire's hands, at the fur of the pelt spilling out from between his fingers. "What is that?" he demands.

Questions, questions, questions, it's always questions with the humans. Below the waves, they know better, they conserve their breath. He shakes his hand to rid it of the other's grasp and it should work, he's strong, stronger than the humans with their soft skin and their easy lives.

But he stays caught. The other man's grasp doesn't loosen, doesn't slide off. He holds Grantaire in place and stares at him like he won't be shaken off until he's had his answer.

Grantaire stares back. He won't play these human games. 

The other one breaks first. It's always the humans who do. His fingers spasm around the bones of Grantaire's wrists. "That's a pelt," he says with all the viciousness of a wild animal.

This is why the folk of the sea know better than to waste their breath. Humans always like to ask questions they think they already know the answers to.

"Where did you get it?" The young man's face is livid red, like it's been burned by the sun or stung by the salt of the waves. "I've heard rumors— Are you out here _poaching?_ "

"I would never," Grantaire snarls, violent. There are some things that aren't worth the breath it takes to speak them, and there are some things that _are_. "I would never hurt another seal, not on my life. I'd die first."

It's a mistake that he said _another_ and it makes him grimace, bracing for the suspicion and then the accusation. If this angry young man realizes the truth of what he is— Well. Grantaire would never hurt another of his own kind, but the humans of the shore are not his own kind. This man means nothing to him, and their secret must be protected.

He doesn't accuse, though. His eyes go narrow as they rake over Grantaire, suspicious. But he's got more sense than most humans, he must sense the honesty behind Grantaire's outburst. He relaxes. His fingers go loose on Grantaire's wrist, and this time he lets Grantaire shake him off. "Did you find that out here?"

"Yes." It's the easiest lie.

"God damn it. _Bastards._ " His hand whips out, quicker than Grantaire expected. He grabs the pelt from Grantaire's hand, and Grantaire feels the fur slip through his fingers, feels the sick wrench in the pit of his stomach that is being separated from his own skin.

The young man is holding it up, examining it like it might hold hidden meanings. "We have seal populations off the shores here, you know," he's saying.

"You don't say."

"And people have been poaching them. Quietly enough that it hasn't garnered any interest from the authorities yet, but my friend Combeferre, he's studying marine biology. He's the one who first noticed something happening with the local seal populations. We've tried to bring it to the attention of the authorities, but they say we need _evidence_ before they can take any action." His mouth twists like the word is bitter. And his gaze goes sharp and avid on the pelt, and Grantaire knows with a certainty that goes all the way down to the marrow of his bones that this boy is going to be trouble.

"Give me that." He lashes out for it, and he's a seal, he's a creature of the sea, he should be able to move too fast for any mere human to avoid. But the boy pulls away and Grantaire's fingers close on empty air.

"Is that why you're out here, too?" the young man asks. His gaze is burning bright still, but now it's with eagerness, not anger. "Looking for poachers? You should join us. We could use the help."

It would be an easy thing, to chase this boy down like a fish in the sea, to catch him and pin him and take the pelt back into Grantaire's possession. Grantaire wants to. He _needs_. A pelt that's given will remain in perfect condition indefinitely, but a stolen pelt is another story. Stolen pelts are the reason so many selkies have found themselves trapped on land amongst the humans. A pelt stolen from its owners hand degrades, losing its potency quickly. Grantaire needs his pelt back, and quickly.

But Enjolras's words make Grantaire hesitate. Seals have been disappearing from their group, it's why Grantaire's come ashore in the first place. Because sometimes their kind come up, and sometimes they find themselves stuck here when stupid humans like the one in front of him find their pelts and decide to keep them, and inadvertently destroy them. Grantaire came ashore to find them, and help them retrieve what remained of their pelts, and come home if they can.

But this firebrand in front of him says that seals are being poached, and the only seals in the area are his kind. If they're not trapped at all, if they're being _killed_ …

Grantaire takes a breath. "What's your name?"

"Enjolras," the young man says, smiling like he's already won. And Grantaire supposes he has.

He nods once. "I would like to help you." It takes everything in him to fall into step beside Enjolras, making their way up the beach, and not reach out to take back his pelt from Enjolras's loosening grip.

He only remembers that he's naked and that the humans find that strange when Enjolras stops half a dozen steps on, turning back to him with a frown. "Wait, where did you stash your clothes? Do we need to go back for them?"

Grantaire feels no guilt about lying to humans, but he hates the necessity of it. That's all the shore ever holds for his kind, is burning sun and nosy humans and one lie after another after another. Things are so much simpler beneath the waves.

He makes an excuse about someone having spirited them away while he was in the water, and it's even mostly true, though Enjolras doesn't realize when he gets incensed on Grantaire's behalf that he himself is the thief, standing there red-handed with the pelt still in his fist.

"I always plan for getting my jeans wet when I come down to the water, because I always do," he's saying. "So I've got an extra pair in my car. I don't know how well they'll fit you, but it's better than nothing, right?"

Grantaire just makes a noncommittal sound, letting Enjolras assume it means whatever he likes, and keeps pace at his side as they walk up the beach, then climb up the steps cut into the cliffside. He freezes at the last step, staring out over the frozen sea of pavement at the top of the cliff, stretching out toward the human city beyond.

He already hates it here. He wants to go home.

But he came here to find his people and bring them home. If he can't do that, then the least he can do is bring back word of their fates, and the promise that the threat has been eliminated. He can protect his people.

He follows after Enjolras, two steps behind, his eyes fixed constantly on the pelt spilling from his hand.

It's only temporary, he tells himself. He'll get his pelt back before it suffers any damage. Then he can go home, and he'll never have to set foot on human land again.

*

He's not the first of his kind to come ashore. But it's a dangerous proposition, for the folk of the sea. Too often, when they leave, they don't come back, because they lost their pelt or they lost their heart, and the humans on land are unkind with both.

The town he has come to has a community box, back behind the library, where people leave clothes and shoes and other items for those in need. Grantaire knows the trick to opening it — all selkies do. It only takes a moment for him to crouch behind, find the catch underneath, and swing the door open. Another moment and he's found an oversized sweater to protect his delicate, furless skin from the cold coming off the water, and a pair of jeans that fit him somewhat better than Enjolras's borrowed pair do.

He pulls on the sweater and carries the jeans in his arms as he makes his way through town, up the long, winding road that leads to the townspeople's homes.

There's one he's looking for in particular, a little cottage that sits on the cliff's edge and looks out over the sea. There are flowers blooming in boxes beneath the windows, and carpeting her garden in a riot of colors. They make Grantaire smile as he skims a hand across their blooms, and comes away with pollen dusting his palm.

He knocks, and waits. And when the door opens, it's all he can do not to throw himself at the woman who opens it and stands on the other side of the threshold.

"Grantaire," she breathes, staring at him like he's an apparition. Her hand clenches tight on the door frame, turning white-knuckled and pale.

He dredges up a smile and greets her with, "Éponine," and a nod. But then his strength breaks, and he steps in off of her porch and wraps her in his arms.

She feels too small, too thin. But she's as strong as ever, as she throws her arms around his back and clings to him. She presses her face to his shoulder and breathes raggedly, and when he tucks his fingers beneath her chin and lifts her face, there are tears clinging to her lashes.

It's such a human thing, tears. She's been gone so long. He wipes them away for her, and rubs at the salt that they leave on his fingers.

She manages a smile eventually, though it's wet and watery. "Come in, come. God, my manners." Manners are a human concept. He grips her hand and wants to drag her back into the sea where she belongs. Instead, he lets her pull him inside and swing the door shut behind him. "What are you doing here? You swore you'd never set foot on the shore so long as there remained a drop of ocean to swim in."

"And you swore you'd come back," he says softly. It still makes her flinch.

"It's complicated."

"Of course it is." When isn't it?

"I lost my pelt."

He'd assumed as much. He'd considered, briefly, the possibility that she remained on land because she chose to, because she'd met some human and loved him and he'd loved her back. But she wasn't the sort to let anything, not even love, keep her from the sea for long. They were alike, in that way. "You could have come anyway," he says quietly. "You could have swum with us in the surf. You didn't have to cut yourself off from us entirely, just because your pelt's degraded—"

"It's not degraded." Her words snap out at him, sharp with violence, but then just as quickly go unsteady and start to waver. "I have to believe it isn't. It isn't stolen, it's _lost_."

"How?"

She turns sharply on her heel and walks away from him. He follows after her, into the kitchen, where she puts a kettle on to boil and sets about scooping tea into cups. He watches her move through the human ritual with a frown. It looks too natural on her. She's been trapped on land for much too long. "I gave it away," she says quietly, with her head bowed over cups and leaves.

Grantaire rises up from the chair he had been lowering himself into, staring at her in surprise. _"You?"_

She slams the ceramic cup down on the counter, hard enough he jumps and half expects it to break in her hand. "I love him. _Loved_ him. I thought... It doesn't matter." She squares her shoulders, pulls her spine straight. That's the Éponine that he knows. "He didn't know what it meant, and he didn't love me back. And before I could ask for it back, there was an... accident."

"An accident," he echoes, staring at the lines of misery drawn in her stiff back and her hunched shoulders.

"He wouldn't have lost it. He's not careless like that. Someone took it."

"And you haven't found it yet?" She's been gone for _years_. If Grantaire had been in her position, he'd have torn the town up and left every building a pile of tinder until he'd found it again. "Are you sure it hasn't—"

"I gave it away freely. If it was stolen from him afterwards, what does that matter? It still left my hands voluntarily. _It isn't degraded._ "

The water boils. The kettle's whistle sounds like a scream. Éponine pours the water, then turns on her heel to face him squarely. "What's the point, anyway?" she asks, soft and weary to the bone. "Of looking for it. Of finding it. If I go back to the sea, I'd just be leaving part of myself here. I don't want to live half a life."

He doesn't know what she calls this, living on the fringes of the humans and losing more and more of herself with every human mannerism she picks up. But she won't thank him for saying any of that, so he just shakes his head, says, "But if you _found_ your pelt, you wouldn't be leaving anything behind." He wonders, briefly, if she means something more substantial, if she's succumbed to the human addiction to material possessions. But she gives him a flat look that's so much like the ones he's used to from her that it makes his heart ache, and gives him hope. She can't be all lost, if he's still able to make her look at him like that.

"The heart's a little harder to retrieve, once lost or given away," she says quietly, but with weight behind it, like he's being obtuse. "I'd take it back if I could."

"Oh, Ep." He sighs and goes to her, and folds her into his arms. She leans against him again, like she had in the doorway, and they hold on to each other there in her tiny kitchen with the smell of the tea wafting up around them.

He doesn't know what else to say. But he knows what he can _do_. He'll help her find her pelt and get it back, just as he will with his own. He'll get them both back, whole and undamaged, and then they can go back to the sea together and she'll forget all about this human man who doesn't deserve anything she's given him, not her heart and certainly not her pelt.


	2. Chapter 2

Éponine seems incensed when Grantaire asks if he can stay with her a while, as though the very idea that he has to ask at all is offensive, and sets him up in her spare room. It's sparsely furnished, just a narrow bed and an end table and a dresser with a few drawers, but he doesn't need any more than that.

It has a window that looks out over the sea, and he's not sure if that's a relief or not. It helps, a little, to be able to look out and remind himself that he isn't really trapped in this box of human making, that the sea and the sky are just beyond, two steps away. He pulls the window open and breathes in the salt on the air and it helps ease some of the panic burning through him. But it also pulls at him, tugging at his heart and urging him home with a siren song that's nearly unbearable.

He can't leave. Even if he had his pelt, he can't leave. But oh, he _wants_ to. He doesn't belong here, and he has no desire to.

He sleeps terribly. He hates these human beds, too hard to be comfortable, too soft to feel sturdy. The blankets wrap around him and he dreams he's tangled in kelp, drowning just beneath the water's surface. He wakes just as his burning lungs flood with water and bolts upright, gulping in air and craving the feel of the sand beneath his feet and the surf lapping at his ankles.

He throws the blankets off, snarling until he's managed to pull himself free of them, then shakes one of them loose of the others and wraps it around his shoulders in a concession to the cold before he goes out to sit on the steps of her porch, where he can feel the breeze and see the sky and smell the salt spray in the air, and he sits there shivering and miserable as the sky overhead shifts from onyx to cobalt to the brilliant, burning colors of sunrise.

Éponine comes out and joins him, as the fiery hues are bleeding out to the gentler blue and white of the morning sky. She hands him a cup of tea wordlessly. He takes it for the warmth, and sips at it for politeness's sake. And when she rises, sometime later, and puts a hand on his shoulder and tells him she's going to make breakfast, his stomach betrays him with a painful rumble.

She just smiles a little, sadly. She doesn't mock, which seems like more than he deserves.

He eats for the necessity of it, because he'll never be able to find either of their pelts if he allows his body to weaken. It all tastes wrong, though, and he wishes he didn't have to. He wants to be back in the sea where he belongs. Human food is strange and he doesn't understand it. He watches Éponine, who eats readily and seems to enjoy it, and wonders what's happened to the girl he once knew.

She takes his dishes, when he's finally finished, and he knows enough of human etiquette to know he ought to offer to help. She's letting him stay with her, after all. She waves him off when he tries, though, and smiles back at him over her shoulder. "Thanks, but I'm pretty sure you wouldn't know a sponge if it hit you in the face."

"I know what sponges look like," he protests, stung, because _he's_ not the one who's been stuck on land for years.

"Not that kind of sponge, Grantaire. And I rest my case." She leaves both their dishes in the sink and comes back to him, folds his hands in hers and starts to speak, but a knock at the door interrupts her before she's managed to make a sound.

Grantaire whips around, his shoulders tight immediately. She rises and puts a hand on his back like she means it to comfort him, and leaves him in the kitchen to answer the door.

He hears it open, hears the indistinct sound of voices. Éponine's familiar one, and one he's never heard before, low, a man's. Éponine's starts polite, but shifts quickly to a hard-edged tone that makes Grantaire rise, makes him go to her.

The man standing in the doorway is tall and dark-skinned and soft-spoken. He's got a notebook in his hands but he's not writing in it, just asking Éponine if she could please lend him a moment of her time and gently imploring her when she snaps back that no, she doesn't have enough to spare to start doling it out to strangers.

"What's going on?" Grantaire comes forward to stand beside Éponine. She doesn't need his help to be rid of this stranger if she wants him gone, Grantaire knows that. But they're predators, and they know the advantage of teamwork.

The stranger's gaze slides to him, and his smile spreads anew. "Good morning," he says to Grantaire. "I'm very sorry to disturb you so early, but I wonder if you might speak with me for just a moment?"

"No."

Éponine moves to swing the door shut. The stranger throws a hand out, and while it seems only imploring, his eyes wide and his face earnest, it keeps the door open. Éponine snarls and curls a hand at her side like she's wishing for claws and a seal's muscles to back them up.

"Please," he says again, not begging but firm. "I know your time is valuable, but this is important. I only want to know if you've seen anything suspicious lately. Anything that seems untoward? We suspect poachers are working offshore, and as you live so close to the beach I was hoping you might have seen something. Anything at all."

Grantaire goes very still. In front of him, tension ripples down Éponine's back. Her hand closes tighter on the edge of the door, her knuckles turning bloodless and pale. "Poaching," she echoes, and her head turns a little, her gaze flicking over her shoulder to Grantaire's.

"You're working with Enjolras," Grantaire says. It's not a question because it doesn't need to be. This stranger has the same fervor, the same bright-eyed passion, though perhaps a little less inclined to anger.

His gaze jerks to Grantaire's, startled for a moment, then pleased. "Yes. There's a handful of us who are working on this together. You know him?"

"I've met him," Grantaire says. "Briefly."

He's not sure what his face is doing, what emotion might be written across it for others to read, but the stranger takes it in for a moment, then flashes a quick smile. "Yes, he has that effect on people. Please, may I come in? I promise I'll keep it short."

Éponine turns to get a better look at Grantaire. She sighs hard and steps back, swinging the door open and allowing Enjolras's friend into her home. "Fine. Be quick about it. We've just boiled water, if you want some tea."

"If it's not any trouble." The stranger looks concerned, like he thinks maybe it might be and Éponine will make it anyway.

He needn't have worried. Éponine puts the kettle and an empty mug on the table in front of him, follows it up with a box of assorted tea, and drops down into the chair she had vacated, sitting kitty-corner to him rather than opposite. Grantaire can read the hardness in her gaze and knows it's a power play, maybe too subtle for humans to notice, or maybe it's just that this particular human is too brazenly sincere to realize that when Éponine sits elbow-to-elbow with him, it's because she's refusing to grant him the honor of having the place at the head of the table.

"There's sugar in the kitchen, if you want it," she says with a frown that warns him against making her rise to go get it. "And milk in the fridge."

"I'm Combeferre," he says to start, when he's poured the steaming water and dunked a tea bag into it. "Can I get your names, please, so I can keep my notes straight?"

Grantaire gives him his. Enjolras already knows it, so it's not as though there's anything to be gained by concealing it. Éponine is more cautious. She watches Combeferre with an assessing look, letting the silence stretch long enough that Combeferre clears his throat and looks back at his notebook as though it might offer him guidance, before she finally breaks it with a curt, "I'm Éponine."

"It's nice to meet you." Combeferre spares a smile for each of them, then sets his notebook down and pulls a pen out of his pocket. "Now, for the matter at hand. Have either of you noticed any unusual activity on the beach lately?"

"I've only been here one night," Grantaire says. "I haven't seen anything."

Combeferre spares him a glance and a nod of acknowledgment, but he doesn't seem satisfied by that answer. "Anything at all. Strange people--"

"It's a _beach_ ," Éponine snaps. "There's always out-of-towners."

Combeferre smiles and dips his head, conceding the point. "Even so. You've lived here long enough, I'm sure you'd notice the difference between the usual activity and anything out of the ordinary. Please, just try to think. Have you noticed anything unusual? Anyone acting suspicious? We've had reports of people seen interacting too closely with the local seal population. Have you noticed anything of that nature?"

Éponine gives a breathless laugh and a roll of her eyes. Behind her, Grantaire's jaw tightens, a muscle jumping in it. The only people anyone might have seen out amongst their kind were selkies themselves. Sometimes they like to strip their pelts off while still a ways out from shore, and swim with their brethren in their long, lanky human bodies, for the novelty of it and the thrill of frigid water against their unprotected skin. They should have been more careful, though. No one should have taken notice of them.

_"We?"_ Éponine's voice drips with skepticism. She arches a brow high and leans back in her chair, raking him over with a glance. "You're not with the police."

Combeferre flinches a little, but looks neither embarrassed nor cowed at being found out. "No, ma'am." The honorific makes Éponine bark a surprised laugh. "Enjolras and I, and the others, we're ... concerned citizens, you might say. Law students, most of us, so we know firsthand how the police are overworked and underpaid. If we gave them what we have now, little more than rumors and speculation, they'd bury the case somewhere while they gave their attention to the ones with actual evidence and promising leads. We _know_ this is happening, even if we can't prove it to the court's satisfaction yet, so we're working to build an airtight case before we hand it over. They won't be able to ignore it, then. They'll have to do something to protect those seals."

Grantaire might be swayed by Combeferre's speech, but he really doesn't have anything to contribute to the conversation. He slips out of the kitchen and finds where he left Enjolras's borrowed jeans. He folds them as neatly as he's able, which isn't much, and tucks them under his arm and returns to find Éponine eyeing Combeferre with mistrust but speaking slowly, allowing him to pull out of her the tale of some mysterious figure she saw on the beach, a few weeks earlier when the moon had hung full in the sky and shed enough light to see by, if not particularly clearly.

"Enjolras," Grantaire says, and draws Combeferre's attention to him. He lifts his head and turns to Grantaire. "Where can I find him?"

Combeferre looks uncertain and maybe a little wary. Grantaire hefts the jeans, directing Combeferre's gaze to them. "I need to return these, and thank him. And he made some mention of joining you? Of helping you?"

Éponine makes a startled sound and looks up at him, but Grantaire keeps his focus on Combeferre so he won't give anything away. She'll have questions, of course — chief among them, he's sure, _since when do you willingly associate with humans?_ — but he can't answer them with a stranger sitting in the middle of her kitchen. She can't even ask them, with him here, or they'll raise too many questions of their own.

_"Oh,"_ Combeferre says, like he's had some sort of revelation. "You're the one he mentioned. The one on the beach yesterday." His gaze drops to the jeans in Grantaire's arms, and Grantaire wonders just how much Enjolras told him, after all.

He forces a smile, forces it bright. "That's me."

Combeferre tears a sheet out of his notebook and scribbles something quickly on it. "We'll all be at the Musain tonight — it's the best coffeeshop in town, and tolerant of us hogging its tables for hours at a time, so if we're going to meet up together it's usually there. Éponine can tell you where to find it, I'm sure, but here's the address all the same."

"I'm more of a tea drinker, actually," Éponine says with a smile that's got too many teeth to be anything but aggression.

Combeferre doesn't even seem to notice. Humans really are the _stupidest_ species. He just folds the paper up into a little square and hands it to Grantaire, his face bright with excitement, then tells Éponine, "You should try their darjeeling, then, it's incredible."

Éponine turns a sharp, appraising look on Combeferre. Grantaire unfolds the square of notebook paper to read the address, though it means little to him. "Will Enjolras be there now?"

"Doubtful. We're all doing canvasing this morning. He took the west end of town, and I can't imagine he's anywhere near done yet. He's very thorough about these things. He should be there this afternoon, though. We all will."

Grantaire nods and shifts away from the weight of Combeferre's attention on him. He gestures with the folded pair of jeans. "I'd like to make sure these get back to him, before there's any mishaps. I'll just go see if I can find him." It's a small town. It shouldn't be hard.

"Find him?" Combeferre startles upright in his chair. "But— It's _miles_ to the other end of town, you don't mean to walk all that way, do you?"

"Walking never hurt anybody." Grantaire backs away, and slips out while he still can, before Combeferre's questions grow more pointed and peel apart the layers of his lies. He hears Combeferre's wondering question drift after him, "What sort of mishaps does he expect to get those jeans into, in the space of an afternoon?"

The murmur of Éponine's answer is too low to make out, but he imagines she's probably telling him something Grantaire will never be able to live down. She likes her mischief, Éponine does, and Grantaire always seems to end up its target.

He shifts the jeans in his arms, studiously _not_ thinking about how much carrying them around feels like carrying his pelt, and starts toward the center of town.


	3. Chapter 3

The walk into town is not unpleasant. A few miles is nothing to Grantaire, not when he's used to swimming dozens or hundreds of them in the sea. He misses the speed of swimming, though. Every step feels small and trudging, and he'd run the distance if he could but he'd draw attention to himself, and worse, he doesn't think he has the stamina, much less the coordination. His body's used to the water. He sometimes thinks he should consider himself lucky that he's even able to balance upright on two legs at all.

The homes and gardens of the town's residents fall behind him, giving way to the buildings and store fronts of the town's businesses. They're meant for tourists, mostly, shops selling ocean-themed kitsch, or beach accessories, or wetsuits and surf boards. They're mostly closed up, at this hour of the morning, though there are a few people in the surf shop and a few more already down at the beach, swimming out into the waves. Grantaire stands at the cliff's edge and stares down, yearning to be with them in the breaking surf.

He only lingers for a moment before he forces himself to turn away and continue on, following the town's main thoroughfare to its west end, where the shops give way to homes again.

He could walk the streets until he happened upon Enjolras, but he doesn't relish that idea, and the likelihood of them missing each other is too great for his liking. So he knocks on doors instead, swallowing down his displeasure that he's been forced into this, to making small talk with strangers he'd no sooner look at twice if he had his choice, and he smiles at the men and women who answer their doors and asks if they haven't happened to see a young man walking about with gold hair and an intent air about him.

When the third person he asks says, "Oh, Enjolras, sure. He was by earlier this morning," Grantaire reconsiders the necessity of the description at all. 

He shouldn't be surprised, he supposes. He knows every one of his own kind by name, after all, and they number in the hundreds around here. But humans always seem so isolated, so alone even when they're standing shoulder to shoulder with one another. They keep their gazes turned inward, and they drive alone in their cars and they part to sleep alone in their homes. They hadn't seemed the sort to know every one of their neighbors' names.

Perhaps it's just that Enjolras is particularly remarkable, and particularly difficult to forget.

It's toward midday when Grantaire finally catches up. His eagerness grows as the answers to his inquiries shift from "he was by earlier this morning" to "I spoke with him a few hours ago" to "he was just by, he must still be around here somewhere." And then, finally, he is. Grantaire turns a corner, sweating beneath the heat of the sun beating down on the back of his neck, and there's Enjolras a block and a half ahead, just an indistinct blur of gold and red against the grey and green and brown of the street and the homes that line it.

Grantaire quickens his steps. It takes another half a block for him to catch up, at least enough for Enjolras to hear him coming. He stops and turns, and Grantaire's close enough he thinks he catches a frown on Enjolras's face. And then he must recognize Grantaire, because surprise and uncertainty wash the frown away.

He waits for Grantaire to reach him. "I didn't know you lived over here," he says, and the words are pleasant enough, but everything else about how he says it asks, _What are you doing here?_

"I don't." Grantaire gestures vaguely in the direction of Éponine's home. "I'm staying with a friend on the east end of town."

Enjolras's brows climb high. He gives Grantaire the same sort of look that Combeferre did, the one that clearly questions whether Grantaire is the least bit sane. "That's miles," he says, like he's caught Grantaire out in a lie.

Grantaire lifts one shoulder. "I like walking." That part _is_ a lie, but it's near enough to the truth that it doesn't matter. 

"What brings you over here, then? Have you come to call on a friend?" Enjolras's words are the height of politeness, but it goes no further than that. His eyes are sharp and guarded, his arms crossed over his chest.

"I was looking for you," Grantaire says, and it only makes it worse. Enjolras pulls back. His brows lower and his mouth turns down in a displeased frown. Grantaire continues on, hoping the rest of what he has to say will ease his obvious mistrust. "Combeferre told me where I could find you." The tension eases out of Enjolras's expression somewhat at the mention of his friend's name. Grantaire strikes the final blow by lifting up the borrowed pair of jeans, drawing Enjolras's attention to them. "I wanted to return these to you."

The mistrust is gone, but bewilderment takes its place. Enjolras stares at his jeans in Grantaire's hand and shakes his head slowly. "You-- God. It could have waited, you know. I'm not so hard-up that one pair of jeans would leave me scrambling for something to wear. It could have waited until this afternoon. Hell, it could have waited a few days, if it came to that."

Grantaire lifts one shoulder again, another shrug. He keeps his smile broad and genuine. "I know me. Trust me, it was better I got them back to you sooner rather than later."

"Well-- Thank you." Enjolras holds a hand out for them, bemused. Grantaire passes them over, but he doesn't leave. When Enjolras seems to consider the matter settled and turns back the way he was heading before Grantaire interrupted him, Grantaire falls into step beside him. "Combeferre said that you were canvassing out here."

Enjolras gives him a look with a raised eyebrow over his shoulder. "Combeferre said a lot of things, it seems." There's an edge to his voice that makes Grantaire wonder if he isn't going to make Combeferre regret that, just as soon as they no longer have the whole width of the town separating them.

"He said you're all meeting up this afternoon. You asked me to join you, and I told you I would, but you didn't mention it. I can't help if I'm sitting at home in ignorance, can I?"

"We meet pretty regularly. You'd have had more opportunities. But if you want to stop by this afternoon, yes, of course you're welcome. I can give you the address."

"The Musain? That's all right, Combeferre gave it to me." It's a fairly obvious attempt to satisfy Grantaire and get him to leave. Grantaire just keeps pace beside Enjolras and pretends not to notice. "How much canvassing do you have left to do?"

Enjolras gives a sharp sigh and tightens his mouth into displeased lines. "Quite a lot, actually. So if you don't mind...?"

"Am I slowing you down?" Grantaire asks with a pointed look between them. They're still walking together, and the pace that Enjolras sets is a rapid one. Grantaire keeps up with him easily.

Enjolras stops abruptly. He grabs Grantaire by the arm, and Grantaire's momentum swings him around until they're facing each other. "What do you want?" Enjolras demands, coming up to stand toe-to-toe with Grantaire, in his face, bristling and irate. "You could have fallen in with Combeferre, if you wanted to help so badly that you couldn't wait until this afternoon. You could have given my jeans to him to return to me. Instead you walked all the way across town just to, what? To help? No."

Grantaire looks down at where Enjolras's fingers are pressing tight into his skin. After a moment, his point sinks in, and Enjolras releases him abruptly. His hand hovers in the air between them for a moment, before he drops it to his side and pulls his shoulders back, his expression fierce. "Combeferre was busy trying to get information out of my friend. If I'd stayed, I'd have just distracted him, and hindered his efforts."

Enjolras's expression changes in an instant, all at once turning sharp and eager. He looks like a seal on the hunt. He grabs Grantaire's arm again, but this time, there's excitement in the trembling of his fingers. "Your friend knows something? She's seen something?"

"Doubtful, I'm afraid. But who knows, maybe Combeferre will be able to coax something out of her that's helpful. It's true she knows the beach, and the sea beyond it. She'd notice, if something were out of place." Notice, but admit to a human? He'd have sworn she never would, before he came ashore. Before he found her home, and saw what the years had done to her. Now, sometimes, she seems more human than selkie, and Grantaire can no longer say with any certainty what she would do, or what she would admit to.

"She should come too," Enjolras says. "To the meeting tonight, we can use all the help we--"

"That's not likely." Grantaire says it gently, to cushion the blow. Years trapped on land may have changed her, but not that much.

The way Enjolras's expression sets, Grantaire expects he takes that as more of a challenge than anything else. He sighs and turns, falling into step beside Enjolras again while they continue down the street.

Enjolras casts him a few uncertain, assessing looks, but doesn't try to convince Grantaire to leave him alone again.

At the next house, Grantaire hangs back and keeps quiet, allowing Enjolras to take the lead in his questioning. The woman is little help, but Enjolras's eagerness and avidness give rise to an unsettled sensation in Grantaire's stomach.

"What do you intend to do," he asks quietly as they make their way to the next house, "if you can't figure out who's harming the seals?"

"Have you lost faith in me already?" Enjolras's words are sharp, and they snap across the air between them.

Grantaire just raises his brows, putting surprise and admonition into the look.

Enjolras slumps after a moment, letting out all the air in his lungs in a rush. "It won't come to that. I have to believe it won't, that we're _doing something_ here, something useful. But if it does... there are other options, I suppose. There are conservationists we can talk to, steps that can be taken to encourage the seals to make their home on some other, more remote beach, where they'll be safe from poachers--"

"No." Grantaire stops walking, staring after Enjolras. "You can't mean that. You can't _do_ that."

Enjolras turns back to face him, fists on his hips and elbows sticking out, his expression gone impatient. "What else should we do, then? If we can't find and stop these poachers, what are we to do? Sit back and allow the seals to be slaughtered, pat ourselves on the back and think _Oh well, we tried?_ I won't do that. I'd rather the poachers were removed than the seals, of course, but given no alternatives--"

"If you trade the seals' lifestyle for their lives, if you _uproot their habitat_ and then tell yourself that you've done well by them, then you're deluding yourself. Destroying their way of life in order to preserve their lives does them no help at all."

Enjolras's brows knit. He takes his hands off his hips and folds his arms across his chest instead. "You don't honestly think it would be better that they die than that they relocate."

"No, of course not. What I think is that you need to try harder to find another way. If you can't stop the poachers and you decide the next best thing is to relocate the seals... You're doing that for you, not for them. Maybe it'll make you sleep easier at night, thinking you've helped in some way. But it won't be any actual help to them at all. So if that's your true cause, if you honestly want to _help_ , then keep thinking."

Grantaire doesn't know what Enjolras's expression means, if he's about to launch into a fury or take a swing at Grantaire or maybe just spin about on his heel and stomp off to finish his canvassing without him. Grantaire waits, braced for whatever it is that's coming but unwilling to take back what he said, because it's the truth.

Finally, Enjolras lets out a long, slow breath and the tension in his shoulders relaxes some. "Very well," he says, and there's a sharpness to the words still, unhappiness honing the edges, but he says them quietly and carefully. "I will. Keep thinking, I mean." And he makes a little gesture and lifts his eyebrows in a question that Grantaire thinks is meant to ask, _Well, are you coming?_ And Grantaire hurries back to his side.

He leaves it at that, and doesn't say anything else on the matter. He's not foolish enough to press his luck.


	4. Chapter 4

An hour on, Grantaire is growing restless. They've discovered nothing worth either the time or the effort they've put in. One old man with a wrinkled face grumbled about kids these days when Enjolras asked if he'd seen any suspicious activity on the beach lately, and started into a rant about how noisy they were and how they never listened when he screamed at them to quiet down. Grantaire's hands curled into fists, nails biting into his palms, until finally Enjolras managed to murmur a hasty excuse and extricate them both from the man's front porch.

"Children are noisy," Grantaire complains as they continue on to the next house, stomping along at Enjolras's side because he'll gain himself no favors if he does something reckless and violent to that old man. "It's how they're meant to be."

Enjolras glances sidelong at him, and he looks startled. Grantaire bristles further, scowling and trying to think how to defend his argument without saying something that will just raise more questions than it answers, like, _Have you ever heard a beach full of seal mothers and their pups? They're not quiet places, and they're not meant to be._ Before he can manage it, a slight hint of a smile pulls at the corners of Enjolras's mouth. "Well. There's something we can agree on, at least," he says, like he can't quite believe the words coming out of his own mouth.

They don't catch a break for another two blocks. This time they've found themselves at the home of a young couple, who invite them in and offer them drinks and snacks. Enjolras turns them down with a brusque shake of his head, but Grantaire's stomach is growling and he's a seal, unaccustomed to suffering through hunger when there is food to be had. He accepts, and stands in the kitchen with a glass of water and a piece of fruit, looking out at the waves sparkling in the distance while Enjolras and the couple talk quietly at the kitchen table.

It's scarcely been a full day since he hauled himself up the beach and peeled off his pet, and yet he's never been so far from the sea for so long. He's never had his pelt out of his possession for so long, and both of those things wear at him, like the grit of sand against sensitive skin. The sea is his home, his anchor. It feels like denying a part of himself, to stand there with the waves in sight and ignore its call.

Enjolras and the couple keep talking together, heedless of the turmoil raging through him, and Grantaire isn't listening, but something catches his attention anyway. He turns away from the window, away from the sea. "What was that?"

The couple looks startled, like they'd forgotten he was there, or maybe just forgotten he could talk. The man clears his throat and glances at Enjolras. "I said, someone was here the other day asking about the seals, too."

"No. You said someone was here asking about their _pelts._ "

Enjolras looks impatient, and irritated by the interruption. "This isn't the first time we've been canvassing, Grantaire. I'm sure they've spoken with at least one of us before about the poaching." He turns back to them. "I'm sorry, please go on."

"He was with you?" The woman looks uneasy, folding her hands before her and flicking her thumbnail against the table's edge. "Oh, I— You know, it probably wasn't important."

The look Enjolras spares Grantaire says, _There, you see?_ "It must have been Feuilly you spoke with, he was the last one to take this area. Short fellow, sandy hair, rather fond of his hat?"

The man and woman blink at each other. "No," the woman says. "That wasn't him at all. He was tall, and dark-haired."

"That's not the name he gave, either," the man adds.

"That's right. It was Mount— Mont— Something." Her face wrinkles up as she thinks.

Across the table from her, Enjolras has gone very still and very intent. "Montparnasse," he says quietly.

"Yes! That was it. You do know him, then."

"Know of him, in any case. He's not one of us."

Grantaire edges closer to Enjolras. "Who is he?" The expression on Enjolras's face promises that the question's answer will be nothing good.

He doesn't respond right away, though. He doesn't even acknowledge the question, just smiles at the couple and thanks them for their time, slips them a card that has _Les Amis de l'ABC_ printed in bold red across it and a phone number underneath and asks them to please let him know if they think of anything else, or if anyone else comes around asking about the seals again.

Grantaire waits until they're out on the street again, Enjolras striding down the road with long, angry steps, before he tries again. "Montparnasse? Who is he, if not one of your group?"

Enjolras stops and takes a deep breath, like he needs strength just to answer the question. "He lives just outside of town, but he's here a lot. He's a troublemaker. Petty things, mostly. But I can't imagine why he would suddenly care about our seals. If he's asking about them—"

"About their pelts."

Enjolras slides him a sidelong glance. "About their pelts. Yes. If he's asking about seal pelts, it can't be because he's trying to _stop_ the poaching."

"Do you think he's the one, then? The one who's been poaching?" Grantaire wants claws and teeth, he wants to bite and rip and tear at this Montparnasse fellow until he can't ever hurt another selkie again. His hands hurt, and he realizes belatedly that it's because he's curled his hands into fists so tight that his fingernails are carving crescent moons into his palms.

It's dangerous to hope, he knows that. Even so, his mind races away with him, conjuring thoughts of this one man, well-known by the locals. How easy it'll be to find him, to take care of him. Days, at most. And then Grantaire can take his pelt back from Enjolras before it has a chance to start to degrade, and he can flee back into the sea where he belongs.

But even as his pulse is quickening with anticipation at the thought, Enjolras is shaking his head. "No, I doubt it. He mostly does petty crimes, like I said. This isn't his sort of operation. He may be involved, but I'll be surprised if he's the ringleader."

There's nothing Grantaire can say that will cleanse the taste of bitter disappointment off his tongue, so Grantaire says nothing, just walks at Enjolras's side and tries not to give away the crushing depth of his disappointment.

The quiet sound of Enjolras taking a sharp breath draws Grantaire's gaze over to him. He's watching Grantaire and there's a new set to his mouth, something hard and intent about his eyes as he looks at Grantaire. "I'd just assumed." He spits the word out like it tastes foul on his tongue. "They said someone came by and I assumed it was Feuilly. I shouldn't have, it was a stupid mistake, but--" He draws himself up, pulls back the fire starting to flare in his eyes. "Montparnasse may not be the man in charge, but he's a piece of the puzzle. He can lead us to the rest. This is important information, and if you hadn't been there I would have missed it. Who knows how much longer it might have taken us to learn it."

He seems like he's building up to something, but he looks at Grantaire like he expects him to put the last piece in place for him. That's a dangerous proposition, with humans. Grantaire just waits. He'll get to it eventually.

"Thank you," Enjolras says, the words spilling out of him. "I'm glad you were here."

Grantaire rocks back on his heels a moment and stares. "All I did was ask questions."

"The _right_ questions. That's important."

"You'd have asked them too, sooner or later."

"But you asked them sooner." Enjolras's mouth flattens into a line that's edging toward irritation. "Say you're welcome, Grantaire."

Seals don't have these rituals for expressing gratitude. If someone does something for you, you catch a fish for them, or brush against them to make your meaning clear, and then you both swim on. It's only humans who act like gratitude is a debt that can only be repaid with words.

"You're welcome," Grantaire says so they can get back to the matter at hand. "Are there more houses to visit? If this Montparnasse spoke with these people, he must have spoken with others as well. If we can find them, they may be able to give us more information than these ones were able to."

Enjolras glances up at the sky, like it holds some sort of answer, then down at his watch. He makes a face and gives a sigh. "There's more canvassing to be done, but it will have to wait. If we don't head back now, I'll be late for my own meeting. The others will never let me hear the end of it."

Grantaire doesn't want to. Now that they've caught a trail, he wants to follow it until he finds its end. He wants to track these people down and destroy them.

_Patience,_ he reminds himself. It's not solely a human concept. It's important on a hunt to bide your time and strike when the moment is right, and the chance for success the greatest. It's only the young and the foolish who barrel in impulsively, and usually come up with little to show for their efforts. And Grantaire is neither young, nor foolish.

It's not idleness, he tells himself. It's cunning.

And so he nods and turns his steps after Enjolras's, heading back the way they'd come. He will wait, like a hunter waits, ready to strike as soon as the proper moment reveals itself. And when that moment comes, he will strike with all the ferocity the sea has bred into him, and he will show no mercy.

*

There is no time to return to Éponine's and tell her what he's learned. By the time they reach the center of town, Enjolras is making concerned faces at his watch and quietly increasing his pace. Grantaire tries not to show that it's winding him to keep up, and hates this feeble human body all over again. In the sea, he can swim for miles without resting.

The Musain is a small little shop on a corner, with big windows and lots of natural light as the sun streams through them. Grantaire appreciates that, at least. The humans' ubiquitous electric lights make his eyes ache. He takes a seat by a window, where he can feel the warmth of the sun on his skin, and watches with quiet curiosity as the others enter and move amongst one another. There's Enjolras, of course, and Combeferre is easy to recognize, and half a dozen others whom Grantaire doesn't know. They all speak easily with one another, like they're fast friends.

Two of them pull chairs up to Grantaire's table without even asking if he minds, one tall and broad-shouldered and completely bald. He grins as he turns his chair around backgrounds and straddles it, arms leaning against the back. "Fresh meat," he says like he's delighted. "You poor thing, do you have any idea what you're in for?"

"I've already met Enjolras," Grantaire says, because it seems pertinent. "And Combeferre."

"Well, then you've at least got an inkling, anyway," the other says as he settles down in his own chair. He, at least, sits on it properly. He looks Grantaire over as well, but then sniffles loudly and breaks away, grumbling, to dig a tissue out of his pocket and blow his nose. "Sorry, sorry," he says when he comes back from throwing it away. "It's allergies, I swear I'm not contagious." Even so, he pulls a small bottle of something thick and clear and sharp-smelling out of another pocket and squeezes a large puddle into his palm.

The other man waves him off when he's offered the bottle. "I'll probably catch it anyway," he says with a wink at Grantaire, and then thrusts his hand out between them. "I'm Bossuet. Or Lesgles, or 'hey, you', whatever strikes your fancy."

Grantaire shakes the offered hand and gives his own name, because he's not completely clueless when it comes to human manners. Bossuet's companion offers his as well, when they've finished, and then immediately grimaces and looks regretful. "Joly," he says like it's an apology. "And you should probably use some of this." He holds out the same little bottle he used himself and offered to Bossuet.

"So much for not contagious," Bossuet says with a wink at Grantaire, like they're sharing a private joke.

"I am ninety-nine--" Joly breaks off to muffle a series of wet coughs in his elbow, then reconsiders. "...Ninety- _five_ percent certain it's just allergies. But you can never be too careful. Go on, Grantaire, take some Purell, our fearless leader will never forgive me if I get his newest recruit sick with the plague on his first day."

Grantaire lets him squeeze the stuff into his palm, then rubs it between his hands as Joly had. It's cold and unpleasant and the smell of it stings his nose, but it dries quickly at least.

Before either of them have a chance to make any other demands of him, or he has to try to figure out how to make conversation with these complete strangers, Enjolras rises. He doesn't even have to clear his throat to signal he's ready to start the meeting, he just stands up and all the others have already taken seats clustered around tables, sipping coffee and straightening papers before themselves and watching Enjolras with rapt attention.

He introduces Grantaire first, and Grantaire would like to sink down into the ocean and disappear beneath the waves. He gives a half-hearted wave to the others and tries to ignore the weight of all their attention upon him. When that proves unsuccessful, he repeats, _Montparnasse, Montparnasse, Montparnasse,_ to himself until he settles. This is important. It may be awful, but it's still important. Enjolras may insist that he wouldn't have learned of Montparnasse without Grantaire's help, but the truth is that it goes both ways. Grantaire wouldn't have known the import of what he'd learned without Enjolras. He needs them. He hates it, but it's still the truth.

He can endure anything for a time, if it means helping his people and getting his pelt back. He can certainly endure this.

Joly and Bossuet were all smiles when they sat down at Grantaire's table, but the others mostly eye him with a mix of wariness and skepticism as Enjolras gives his introduction. At least until Enjolras says, "We have some information at last, and Grantaire's the reason that we have it. I'd have missed it, if it weren't for him."

Some of the skepticism remains, but this time it's turned on Enjolras himself, as though the words he speaks are too incredible to be believed. And as those stares turn back to Grantaire, this time they're considering, or impressed, or just delighted. Someone with a wild mess of dark hair leans his chair so far back he nearly topples it over, just so he can grin at Grantaire and demand, "Showing up our leader on your first day, are you? I don't know if I should tell you to be proud, or scared."

"I'm not afraid of him," Grantaire says quietly, and it makes most of the others laugh like he's told some great joke.

Combeferre, sitting beside the dark-haired jokester, smiles kindly at Grantaire. "I think what Courfeyrac means to say is that if you've been any aid to our cause at all, Grantaire, then we're in your debt."

"Shush, you," Courfeyrac says, straightening his chair to punch Combeferre in the shoulder. "What I meant to say is what I actually said."

It's all said with smiles, though, all the teasing and fake aggression from everyone is done with grins like it's great sport. Grantaire pushes his shoulder against the hard wooden frame around the window and is glad to be apart from it. He watches it all with a frown, trying to size up the group, it's mood and tone and who its greatest influencers are. Enjolras, obviously, Grantaire doesn't need a hunter's instincts to tell that. And Combeferre, he thinks, with his warm smiles and his quiet way of speaking that makes everyone around him still their tongues so they can hear what he has to say. And Courfeyrac as well, perhaps, though Grantaire's less certain about him. He makes the others around him smile and nod and pay attention, but Grantaire's not sure if that's because they trust him to lead, or simply because they enjoy the laugh he provides.

"Bossuet," Enjolras says when they have all, thankfully, moved on from Grantaire. "How did your conversation go with the police department?"

"No luck," Bossuet says with a grimace and a self-deprecating smile. "I spoke with Officer Lamarque today, and while he's at least sympathetic to the cause, and didn't brush me off with some comment about it being a matter for Animal Control, or Fish and Game, or basically anyone else at all, he still says that they can't do anything without evidence, and a solid case to back it up. And they don't have the manpower to spare create one. And so long as there are people out there being killed and burglarized and victimized, they're never going to have people or time to spare for a bunch of animals."

Grantaire bristles at the word _animals_ , but thankfully, no one's paying him enough attention to notice. All eyes are on Bossuet, and then when he's finished giving his report, on Enjolras waiting for his reaction.

Enjolras looks a little thoughtful, but not at all defeated by this news. "They don't have the people to spare," he says to them all. "But we do. We'll build the case for them, and when it's airtight, we'll hand it over to the department and all they'll have left to do is issue warrants and round the bastards up. And we've got our first piece of evidence right here." He lifts up his messenger bag and lets it thud onto the tabletop, drawing everyone's eyes.

Grantaire presses his shoulder harder against the window frame, hard enough to leave a mark, maybe hard enough to bruise. He knows what Enjolras is going to show them, even before he opens the bag and pulls it out. _His pelt._ God, he's just been carrying it around all day. That bag had bounced between them as they'd walked the town's streets together, close enough that all Grantaire would have had to do was slip a hand inside, grab his pelt, and run.

Enjolras passes it around, and Grantaire's pretty sure that the only reason no one notices the tension that's gone through him or the furious curl to his lip is because everyone else looks somewhere between horrified and irate as they take in the weight of the pelt and the softness of its fur.

He feels each touch like a cold hand run across his soul. He curls his fingers around the edge of the table and grips it until they ache, struggling not to do or say something that will give himself away. He hates this. He hates all of them. He's going to have to sit here like it means nothing while they pass his pelt around amongst themselves, and when it reaches him he's going to have to _hand it back to Enjolras_ , and it may very well kill him.

But there is work yet to do here. He could run with the pelt as soon as his fingers touched it, but he'd be leaving Éponine behind, and all the other selkies who've gone missing. 

He has to stay.

He has to give his pelt back. It may kill him, but at least then it will have been freely given, instead of stolen, and he won't have to worry any longer about it degrading before he can get it back.

He has to do this.

"Bastards," Joly mutters as the pelt is handed to him, spreading it out across the table so he can take in the full size of it, and looking vaguely ill. "Fucking _bastards_."

Bossuet won't even touch it, just shakes his head and waves it away, and that means there's no one left to give it to but Grantaire. He reaches for it, his heart in his throat, his pulse pounding so loud he can hear it, like a drumbeat echoing through his skull.

Before he can wrap his fingers in the familiar weight of the fur, Enjolras is there standing beside their table, taking the pelt back, folding it up and tucking it away.

Grantaire's fingers close on empty air. He contemplates killing Enjolras, very slowly. There would be satisfaction in it. But it wouldn't help him find the other selkies, or Éponine's pelt.

He lowers his lip over his bared teeth, restrains the snarl that wants to push rom his throat. He adopts an unconcerned air as best as he's able, trying to seem like the sort of man who doesn't need to inspect the pelt because he's the one who found it, because he already knows what's at stake.

Enjolras moves away to stand before them all, the pelt hanging from his hand like a flag or a banner. "This is what we are fighting against," he says, grim-faced and vibrant. "This is the result if we fail. This is why we cannot."

There is at least some hope to be had by how convinced everyone looks, all bright-eyed and eager to run off and fight a battle that isn't theirs. It will be good to not be facing this battle on his own. But even so, Grantaire feels the absence of his pelt like a hole in his chest, an open wound that throbs and aches, and it's hard to feel anything but despair.


	5. Chapter 5

Éponine is out in her front yard when Grantaire returns, trimming the flowers in her window boxes. She straightens as he comes down the road, shields her eyes from the evening sun and looks toward him, but doesn't come to keep him company for the last minutes of his walk. She just sets down her shears and puts her fists on her hips and stands there waiting for him, until he's passed through her garden gate and they can speak without shouting down the street at one another.

"You didn't get it back," she says after one glance at his face. She almost looks like she's disappointed in him for his failure.

He thinks about how close he was, and how much greater her disappointment would be if she knew. "There wasn't an opportunity. They're meeting again in a few days, I'll go back and try again then. There's time yet before it starts to degrade."

"Not much," she says with a snort, and her expression turns to even deeper unhappiness. She eyes Grantaire like he's the source of it, and he's not sure why, but when she spins on her heel and stalks back inside the house, he follows after her, intent upon figuring it out.

He doesn't have to wait long. As soon as they're inside with the door shut behind him, she spins back to him, like she's only barely managed to contain herself this long. "You're going back there." She says it like it's an accusation, flat and unhappy.

"They have my pelt. I don't see much alternative. I'm not likely to get it back by keeping my distance."

"No. It's more than that." She crosses her arms over her chest, drums her fingers against her elbows. "You're _helping_ them."

"What am I supposed to do, Ep?" He pushes past her, because this argument may be unavoidable, but having it standing around in her entryway is pointless. She stomps after him, and stays standing when he drops into a chair in the kitchen and leans his head in his hands. "This is what they're interested in. If I want to my presence to be tolerated, I have to seem to be likeminded in that."

She doesn't relent, doesn't bend. Éponine never bends, not for anyone. "This is a selkie matter," she hisses. Her fingers have gone tight around her arms, pressing in dents that are bound to leave bruises. "You're involving humans in something they've no right to be involved in. You'll expose us all."

"Give me a little credit. I know how to keep our secrets."

"Do you?" she demands, belligerent. "You could do a better job of showing it."

"You could come with me."

She rocks back as though he struck her, and stares at him with the same wide-eyed shock he'd expect if he had. "No." It bursts out of her on a wild laugh. " _No._ Have you lost your mind? Why would I do that? You shouldn't, and I'm not about to join you in your madness."

"Because they're the enemy?" Grantaire asks, though he's dubious. She's changed so much in the years she's been trapped here. She'd hate him for saying it, for even thinking it, but she acts more like a human than a selkie now. How can she say they're not the same, when she's taken on so many of their mannerisms that they're practically indistinguishable?

Maybe she reads his thoughts on his face, or maybe she's just thinking the same thing, because she gives him a long look, her jaw set and her expression hard. And then she says, very softly, very clearly, "They're not selkies, Grantaire. And we're not humans. If we look the same beneath our pelts, that's just coincidence. It doesn't mean as much as it seems."

"You love one of them," he says quietly, braced. It's a low blow and he knows it. He thinks maybe she'll strike him for it, and he thinks if she does, he'll let her. He deserves it.

Her gaze burns into him, burns with the fire of the old Éponine he used to know, but she doesn't move a muscle. "It's possible to love someone and still remain aware of the differences between you."

"You gave your pelt to him. Why else would you do that, if not because you wanted to stay--"

She doesn't say anything. She doesn't have to. Selkies are creatures of action, not words, and he reads the dire warning in the way tension rolls down her shoulders like a wave, in how her hands curl at her sides and the pupils of her eyes dilate wide. He breaks off, and tries to figure out how to finish making his point without losing her friendship for good.

He runs his tongue over hips lips and works the tension out of his jaw, and then says, very carefully, "There are reasons to join them other than solidarity, Ep. If it's possible to love a human but still remain aware of your differences, then it's possible to help one and keep that in mind, too. I haven't forgotten."

She doesn't stand down, but her hands curl into slightly loser fists. Her chest fills with a deep breath, instead of the quick and shallow ones she's been taking.

"Whether I'm with them or not, they're going to be looking into the poaching they think is going on. If you'd been there tonight, you'd have heard the way they talk about it, and you'd know. Nothing's going to sway them from their course, certainly not me. And if they're going to be sticking their noses in anyway, then the risk of our existence being discovered remains, and it won't be due to my presence among them. Don't you think it would be safer, for all of us, if we were there to try to keep them from sticking their noses in the wrong places? I'm not putting us at risk, Ep. I'm trying to keep us safe. I could do a better job of it if you would help me."

She had eased some, as he'd made his point. But now all that tension pulls right back through her, leaving her with the corners of her mouth tight and her eyes as hard as flint. "Do what you feel you must," she says. "But I'm not going to be a part of it." She spins on her heel and walks off into the kitchen. "I'm making tea," she says without looking back at him over her shoulder. "Get a cup if you want some."

Grantaire sighs, and rises, and goes to find a cup. The conversation may be over, but frustration still sits in his chest like an ember, burning him up. Maybe the tea will quench it. Maybe it will just give him something to do while he and Éponine try to navigate their way back to a conversation that they can have without snapping at each other.

*

The next morning dawns with a chill in the air that has little to do with the weather outside. Éponine moves about her breakfast routine and though every word is perfectly pleasant, her movements are short and sharp, her mouth still tight with lingering anger. Grantaire offers to help, cautious, but she rebuffs him curtly, and so he remains leaning in the doorway between the kitchen and the eating area, watching her slam boxes around and wishing he had a way to settle her that didn't involve giving up on his pelt, or abandoning his people to their continued disappearances from the sea.

She'll understand that eventually, when the nerve he'd struck upon isn't so raw. In the meantime, he can give her her space.

A staccato rap at the door makes her stiffen, her spine going bolt-straight, her fingers curling carelessly on the slices of bread she's readying for the toaster.

"I'll see who it is," Grantaire says quietly, because it's clear as daylight that answering the door is the last thing she wants to do. 

She doesn't acknowledge him, but she doesn't stop him either, so he pushes off of the doorway and goes to see who's come calling on her so early in the morning. He opens the door, already drawing a breath to send them away, to tell them that it's not a good time and if they want a word with Éponine they'll need to come back later. Days later, preferably.

He is not prepared for the sight of Enjolras standing on Éponine's front porch, looking grim-faced and just a little wild-eyed. Grantaire's words die on his tongue with his mouth half open.

"Grantaire." Enjolras's gaze seizes upon his face, eager. "Jehan just saw Montparnasse in town. Come on, quickly, I need you."

Grantaire frowns and doesn't move from the doorway. "You said he comes into town a lot."

"He does." Enjolras is practically bouncing on the balls of his feet, he's so wound up. "Grantaire, your _shoes_ , please."

"Then why are you all excited about him being here now?"

Enjolras looks like every word is a trial. "Because if he's here, then he's not at home. If we want to find out who he's working with, who he's working _for_ , now's our time, so will you put your shoes on and come with me _please?_ "

"I'm not even dressed," Grantaire says stupidly, caught by the energy running through Enjolras, by the way the taut, somber look on his face hides a growing eagerness underneath, by his intensity and his urgency. 

"You don't need him," Éponine says from behind him, her voice cold with warning.

Enjolras glances past Grantaire to her, his brow creasing at the interruption. "I do, as a matter of fact."

"You've a large group, or so I've heard. Take one of them."

"Most everyone has class this morning. It's poor timing, but it's unavoidable. Feuilly was called in for an opening shift this morning, or I'd ask him. Bahorel is with Jehan tailing Montparnasse."

"Combeferre, then." Her hand is white-knuckled where it wraps around the jamb.

"He's in class like the others. There's just the three of us." He turns his gaze back to Grantaire, imploring directly to him now, instead of to Éponine. "I'd really much prefer to have backup, if I'm going to go creeping around the house of someone like Montparnasse. Will you help us?"

He can feel the chill of Éponine's stare directed at his back. He turns back to the house and it brings him around to face her squarely. She just watches him silently, every line of her body radiating disapproval, and doesn't give way even when he steps forward to pass through the doorway.

"Don't," she hisses, low in his ear when has to brush past her to make it back into the house. "Don't. It's not your fight. What if you get hurt? What if you get discovered?"

"What if I can keep someone else from losing their pelt by doing this, by stopping him?" He turns his head so he's looking right at her, too close for her to avoid his gaze. "What if it's your sister's? Even if it's just one person, just one pelt. Isn't it worth it?"

She shuts her eyes and he knows she's defeated. She still has one last volley, though, one final weapon held in reserve. "You're going to lose yourself," she breathes, her eyes still shut, her expression eloquent with pain and grief. "That's what they do. They'll take you in, and spit you back out remade into someone new, and it won't matter if you get your pelt back because you'll never be the same."

It doesn't take a leap to know she's speaking from experience. It makes him want to hug her, to clasp her tight and squeeze until there's no room for hurt inside her. But Enjolras is still there, two steps away pretending not to watch them, and Montparnasse is out there somewhere in the town, and Grantaire can't sit idly by. "All the more reason to keep any more of our kind from being trapped here with them, then, don't you think?"

She sighs, and her shoulders slump, and she doesn't put up any more resistance when he brushes past her into the house, to get his clothes and his shoes and hurry back to where Enjolras is waiting for him.

*

"My car's just up the block." Enjolras slants Grantaire a wry look. "He lives the next town over. I don't recommend walking."

"As long as you're driving," Grantaire says easily, and follows him the short distance to where Enjolras's car is parked.

It's a novelty, watching the town speed by through the car's windows without having to lift a muscle to make it happen. He still prefers to walk, though, the feel of his muscles moving and the sun on his skin, the wind in his hair. The roar of the engine and the rumble of the road beneath them is foreign and strange and not entirely pleasant. Enjolras is quiet while they drive, his attention on the road and, if Grantaire had to hazard a guess, his thoughts on Montparnasse.

Fifteen minutes into the drive, Grantaire rolls down his window, so he can at least feel the whip of the wind and pretend he's not caught in a box on wheels.

The cool bite of the damp air is a relief. It throws his hair in his face and reminds him of being out on the sea as a squall rolls in. It feels just a little bit like home, more so than anything else has since he climbed out of the waves.

He turns his head as he swipes his hair out of his eyes and catches sight of Enjolras, his hair tossed about by the wind as though by a tornado. Humans love their walls, their carefully-controlled environments, but Enjolras is grinning in the wild storm of the wind, pushing the loose strands of his hair back behind his ear and seeming unconcerned when the wind just pulls it right back out. It'll be a mess by the time they get where they're going. Humans don't usually care for mess, but Enjolras's face is as bright as the sun.

The town gives way to lush trees and a single, winding road. Grantaire turns his face up to the dappled sunlight flashing through the foliage and breathes deep of the smell of green, growing things, until at last it falls away to reveal the next town over, Montparnasse's home.

In an instant, he forgets about the sea and the sun and the minor irritation of car travel. He risks a glance at Enjolras and finds him similarly sobered, smile gone and eyes intent on the road in front of them.

"You know where he lives?" Grantaire asks him quietly.

Enjolras gives a single, sharp nod. "We have his address. Just a few minutes more and we'll be there."

Grantaire watches the buildings slide by as Enjolras navigates the car through town, through the downtown area filled with little shops and cafes that are ubiquitous in seaside towns, up into the hills to pull to a stop in front of a ramshackle house with peeling paint and an overgrown yard. It's definitely seen better days, and Grantaire doesn't care much for the human obsession with material things, but he does know that it's important to take care of one's home, whatever sort of home that happens to be. He eyes the house uncertainly, wondering if Éponine's pelt is in there, if it's still whole or been degraded by time. He wonders, if it is here, if it isn't degraded, what sort of condition it will be in. Would a man who can't be bothered to take care of his home put any thought at all to maintaining a stolen pelt? Or would he toss it carelessly in a corner somewhere, to grow dusty and dirty and moth-eaten?

The thought of it makes his hand tighten on the handle of the car's door. He wants to jump out and storm into the house, to tear it apart at the seams until he's found whatever pelts hide inside and returned them to their rightful owners. He wants to wait for Montparnasse to return and mete out the sea's version of justice. He wants to find Éponine's pelt, so he can return it and prove to her that there is a benefit to aiding the humans in this way.

Enjolras turns the car off and pulls the key from the ignition. They sit in silence for a moment, both watching the house before them, until at length Enjolras turns his head to look at Grantaire. "All right," he says. "Let's go."

"Yes." Grantaire's voice is short and clipped and angry already. "Let's." And they climb out of the car together.


	6. Chapter 6

Enjolras pulls out his phone and looks at the screen as they approach the house. "Bahorel says Montparnasse is still stirring up shit around town. His words," he adds when Grantaire glances at him. "So we should have at least twenty minutes, even if he heads home right now."

Grantaire nods and walks with him up the steps to Montparnasse's front door. He tries the doorbell while Enjolras jiggles the handle, but the door doesn't yield and only silence answers them.

"Right," Enjolras says. "You go around to the right, I'll take the left. Keep an eye out for any open windows. If we can get away without smashing any windows, I'd prefer it. People tend to get nosy at the sound of breaking glass."

Grantaire nods and they part, circling around the house to the back. He picks his way across cracked concrete, glancing up at each window as he passes it, but they're all locked tight. When he gets to the house's back door, Enjolras is already there, crouching in front of it with a toolkit spread across his thighs. He catches Grantaire's eye briefly as he comes up beside him. "Nothing. You either?"

Grantaire shakes his head.

"I expected as much. Petty criminals usually know better than to leave their house open to anyone who feels like stopping by. They don't have the same sense of invulnerability that you get in the suburbs. They know better." He bends forward again, sliding a thin tool into the door's lock.

Grantaire watches him work silently for a moment, waits until he's pulled that tool out and is selecting another before he says, "I thought you were all law students. Isn't this rather against your laws?"

Enjolras glances at him. A quick smile flits across his face, there and gone in an instant. "Some of the others are. Feuilly works, and Joly's in med school, and Jehan's somewhat between degrees at the moment, and Bahorel— Well. But me, no." He chooses another lockpick and slides it into place, his brows furrowing with concentration. "I'm poli sci. The world's political and judiciary systems are too broken for me to want to become a cog in the machine. I'd rather learn about them from the outside, so I can better figure out how to fix what's broken." 

The lock clicks, and Enjolras makes a sharp, satisfied sound. "There we are, that ought to do it." He tries the handle, and grins sharply when it turns beneath his grasp. "Shall we?"

It's breathtaking when he turns that grin up to Grantaire. No human should shine so bright. "Yes," Grantaire says, gruff to hide his reaction, and lets Enjolras take the first step through into the house.

It's not in quite as much disrepair inside as the outside might have suggested, but even so, it's cluttered and untidy. There are dirty dishes piled high in the kitchen sink, a plate left abandoned on the table. Enjolras glances through the cupboards quickly ("If he's got all his secrets kept in a jar in the freezer, then he _deserves_ to be robbed," Enjolras mutters, and Grantaire thinks he's mostly speaking to himself, but it makes him grin all the same) and Grantaire helps him, coming around from the other side so they meet in the middle. Something smells like it's about to go off in Montparnasse's fridge, but other than that, there's nothing of note in the kitchen.

They move through the house methodically, to the living room and then a closet by the front door, full of cardboard boxes that seem promising but prove to contain nothing of interest at all.

Enjolras takes the bathroom while Grantaire moves into the bedroom. Enjolras joins him there a moment later with a quick shake of his head and a frustrated slant to his mouth, and they stand together surveying the disaster that is Montparnasse's bedroom.

"Well," Enjolras says at last, pulling his shoulders back. "At least we won't have to worry that he'll notice anything's out of place." And he picks his way through the drifts of discarded clothing, over to the closet set into one wall.

Grantaire eyes the piles of clothes and who-knows-what, searching every fold for even just the corner of a pelt, peeking out from beneath the mess. But there's nothing. 

Grantaire bares his teeth as frustration whips through him. They know Montparnasse is involved. There has to be _something_ here to prove it, even just the tiniest hint. Why can't they find it? He doesn't think he'll be able to contain himself if they're forced to leave here empty-handed.

"Oh, _there_ you are," Enjolras murmurs, full of satisfaction. Grantaire drags his attention back to the present and forces himself to focus on him.

"What is it? What have you found?" His heart pounds. Could it be a pelt? Could it be that easy?

But, "Boxes," Enjolras says, and Grantaire can't help his groan. Flipping through hundreds of sheets of poorly-filed papers and trying to keep from going cross-eyed as endless words pass in front of his vision is not Grantaire's definition of easy.

The look Enjolras gives him is sympathetic, but unrelenting. "Here, help me get this one down," he says, gesturing Grantaire forward as he reaches for a box on the closet's top shelf, well above eye level. "It's heavy as hell, and I don't relish the idea of the concussion I'd get if I dropped it on my head."

Grantaire comes forward to help him, reaching to take one end of the box while Enjolras grips the other. He isn't wrong, it feels like the box is loaded with stones it's so heavy.

They're still easing it off the shelf and into their hands when Grantaire freezes, every nerve singing alarm. The muscles in his arms burn from the strain of holding the box aloft, but he doesn't have attention to spare for that. He squeezes his eyes shut and _listens_ , tuning out Enjolras's worried, "Grantaire? What is it? What's the matter?" He listens beyond, straining to hear whatever it might have been that caught his attention.

There— He hears it again, a sharp scrape like rocks sliding against each other down a hillside. Or like footsteps on gravel, just outside the house.

"Somebody's here," he breathes.

"What?" Enjolras's brow furrows. Irritation or consternation or disbelief, Grantaire can't tell. "What makes you think—"

"I can _hear_ them, Enjolras. We have to go." He drops the box, letting it thud down onto the floor, and grabs Enjolras by the wrist. He's not sure if he means to flee or fight, but either way they need to move.

Enjolras, though, twists in Grantaire's grasp and grabs onto him in return, fingers wrapped around Grantaire's wrist, and he pulls him two half steps into the closet and pulls the door shut on them just as the sound of a key in the lock at the front door becomes unmistakable.

The closet is narrow and they're pressed close together within it. Grantaire's heart beats like a drum and his hands tremble because he needs to be doing something. But they can't run like this, can't fight, they're just stuck here, frozen. A narrow strip of light works its way in from beneath the closet door, not enough to really see by, just enough to make out the indistinct outline of Enjolras's profile as he turns his head like he's straining to hear. "We should've had ten more minutes, at least," he breathes, like it's a personal affront that their plan has gone to hell. "And Jehan would've warned me if he were heading back this way."

"Perhaps Montparnasse has a friend," Grantaire says. "Don't your friends ever come over to your house?"

Enjolras is quiet a long moment. "No," he says at last. "Not generally." The lock clicks open and the front door swings on squeaky hinges. Enjolras's grip tightens on Grantaire's wrist until his bones ache and his pulse batters against his fingertips. "Quiet," Enjolras whispers, barely audible, as though Grantaire needed the warning.

The floorboards creak beneath the weight of footsteps, but they don't come straight to the bedroom and throw the closet door open to reveal them. Grantaire strains to hear them, and the sound of conversation that's muffled by the walls, and thinks they're headed in the direction of the kitchen.

Enjolras shifts against him, pressing in tighter as he works an arm down, then back up with his cell phone in hand, its bright screen throwing a cold blue light across Enjolras's face. "Nothing from Jehan," he breathes, scowling at the phone. " _Damn_ it, we should have brought a lookout."

Grantaire lays a hand over the cell phone's screen, obscuring most of the light. "They're going to see."

Enjolras lifts his head and frowns at him through the dim light. "They're going to hear," he says, though Grantaire didn't speak any louder than he did.

He takes the phone and slides it into his own pocket, casting them back into darkness again. Enjolras huffs an irritated breath that ghosts across Grantaire's collar, but doesn't speak again.

Grantaire drops his head back softly against the wall behind him and prays for a quick end to this. Even discovery would be better than _this_. The space is too small and Enjolras is pressed in too close, he's warm through his shirt and it's making Grantaire sweat, making the air in the closet seem thin and unsatisfying. He needs to get out of here, to break away somewhere he put more than inches of distance between them, and drag in great lungfuls of air until his chest has stopped aching with the threat of suffocation.

The footsteps return from the kitchen, growing nearer. They both freeze. Grantaire's pulse goes quicker, his breathing turning ragged and audible. Enjolras presses a hand across his mouth, as though that's going to do anything. His eyes are very wide, and he flinches a little with every nearing footstep.

The voice grows more distinct as well, a low, grudging grumble. "What's it to me if the Jondrettes string you up by your balls?" he grumbles as though continuing a conversation, though Grantaire can only hear the one set of footsteps. "You're the one off gallivanting about when there's a job to do, ain'tcha. Now suddenly it's Babet's job to clean up your messes. Think I should at least get a nice fur coat for my troubles, all told, but no, those skinflint bastards won't hear a word of it."

Enjolras jolts against Grantaire, going rigid with a tension that vibrates all through him. Grantaire is no less affected, his breath coming sharp against Enjolras's palm. They stare at each other through the dark, across the meager distance between them.

Babet stomps around the bedroom grumbling to himself for what feels like hours. At length, he gives a grunt that sounds maybe like satisfaction, and it's followed by the sound of a phone being dialed.

"Yeah," he says after a brief moment. "I've got it, you asshole. Next time you need a favor, you can ask Claquesous, how's that sound?" His voice fades as he leaves the bedroom. Enjolras lets out a sharp breath, but doesn't relax at all against Grantaire.

They stay motionless until they hear the sound of the front door slamming, and then the crunch of Babet's feet on the gravel out front again. And then they're both moving like a shot, scrambling for the closet door and spilling out. Grantaire's gasping for air, and Enjolras's face is so bright he looks like he's on fire. "Did you hear that?" he demands, whipping around toward Grantaire, every line of his body radiating excitement.

Grantaire nods. "The Jondrettes."

"And the coat. He wouldn't have said that if they weren't involved. They must be the ones behind it all, the ones pulling the strings."

"Do you know them?" The sudden prospect of having this all done with in short order is exhilarating, but his hopes are crushed before they can soar too high when Enjolras shakes his head.

"Never heard the name. We'll find them, though. We'll take them down."

"What about Montparnasse?"

That makes some of the fire in Enjolras's expression die, tempered by regret. "We don't have enough to do anything about him, not right now. All we got today was hearsay, and secondhand at that. It's not enough to build any sort of case off of. We'd get laughed right out of the police department."

Grantaire bristles. He wants Montparnasse to suffer. He wants him to _pay_. Enjolras comes toward him and lays a careful hand on his arm. Grantaire jumps, then stares down at it, his skin stark against Grantaire's.

"This operation... it's a hydra. Do you know what that means?"

Grantaire nods. He heard some of the human myths, as a child. He always liked the one about Heracles and the hydra. He liked the notion of a great beast that only rose up stronger and fiercer every time the humans tried to strike it down.

"Montparnasse... he's just one of the heads. If we take him out, they'll just find more to take his place. Nothing will change, seals will still die, and we'll be back at square one. We need to strike at the heart. If we take down the person or people in charge of this whole thing, everything else will unravel without them."

Grantaire hates it. This sort of calculated defeat goes against his nature. But he takes a breath and forces himself to listen to what Enjolras is saying, and to remember what's important. His pelt, and Éponine's, and all the selkies out there who will lose their pelts and their freedom if this isn't ended. Stopping Montparnasse would provide a vicious satisfaction, but it won't finish anything at all. It won't help anyone.

Grantaire sighs and relents. Enjolras searches his eyes for a moment before he gives an answering nod and lets his hand drop off of Grantaire's arm. "The Jondrettes," Grantaire says once more, firm.

Enjolras nods again. "Yes. If they aren't the heart, they're at least one step closer to it. We'll find them."

"What do you know about them?"

"Nothing." He shakes his head, looking regretful. "Or rather, very little. It's a small town, but you only get to know your neighbors if they make it a point to be part of the community, and the Jondrettes keep to themselves." He grunts and makes a gesture that could mean anything, could encompass everything. "Not hard to guess why, if they're involved in this sort of business."

"They're local, though." Grantaire crouches to rifle through the box they'd retrieved together, because there's no point in passing up a potential opportunity to find more evidence, but his thoughts are already elsewhere, gone flying ahead to the Jondrettes and the next steps they'll need to take. "We can find them."

"Yes." Enjolras crouches, too. He lays his hand on Grantaire's where it rests on the edge of the box, his fingers brushing against Grantaire's wrist where he'd gripped him so tight earlier. "Between the lot of us, we'll have every secret they've ever buried unearthed in a matter of days, I can promise you that. Sit Courfeyrac down in front of a keyboard and he can work miracles." He presses his fingers harder to Grantaire's wrist, drawing his attention up. "We're going to figure this out. Whatever they're doing, whoever's behind it all, we're going to stop them."

"Yes. We will," Grantaire says, and it's a promise. For the first time, though, the thought of it being _we_ and not _I_ doesn't make him want to run away until the woods or the sea has swallowed him up and left the world of these humans far behind.


	7. Chapter 7

Enjolras drops Grantaire off in front of Éponine's house and speeds away. Grantaire lets himself in and finds her sipping at the cold dregs of tea, curled up on her couch with a blanket over her lap and a book spread upon it. She glances up when he comes into the room, then turns her gaze right back to her novel. It's not quick enough, though. Not quick enough to hide from Grantaire the hungry curiosity that had been there, shining behind her eyes.

"He didn't have your pelt," Grantaire tells her quietly, because he knows that's the most important information right now, and tries not to notice the way it makes her shoulders slump and her expression twist with irritation, like she's annoyed at herself for being disappointed. "But we did learn—"

"I don't care." Her words are sharp, and she slaps the book's cover shut to punctuate them. "Meddle in human affairs if you like, but I want no part in it."

Grantaire relents, raising his hands in the human gesture for surrender. She doesn't even tease him for it, and it makes him frown. She just goes back to her reading.

Later, when his rumbling stomach reminds him that he can't eat as irregularly as he did as a seal, she shoos him into the kitchen, plants her fists on her hips, and declares that she's going to teach him how to cook. "If you're going to be moving in, you'll be pulling your own weight," she says with an immovable sort of finality.

Grantaire deigns to be taught, though he can think of any number of other ways he'd rather be spending the time. "I thought humans had widely-available food fit to be ordered and consumed at a moment's notice, these days," he complains, and gets little more than Éponine's sharp laughter in reply.

"They also have an obesity epidemic. If you don't watch it, life on land will make you fat and slow, and then you'll be in real trouble when you get your pelt back." The way she says _when_ , not _if_ , like she doesn't harbor any doubts at all in his ability to do so, is bolstering. When he offers her a small smile of thanks, she just rolls her eyes, but he doesn't miss the slight, answering smile of her own.

"You go out and get a job and start paying your way," she adds, while he turns his attention back to sautéing garlic and onions and trying not to succumb to the aromas coming up out of the pan, "and you can order takeout as much as your little heart desires, how does that sound?"

"Like a commitment," he says without thinking, and then realizes who he's talking to. "Like it would take time from my search for our pelts, and the poachers."

"Then quit complaining and turn the heat down beneath that before you burn my garlic, will you? Now, come over here, I'm going to show you how to debone a chicken."

*

He doesn't ruin the chicken, but it's a near thing. Éponine stands looking down at the finished meal, an expression on her face like she's trying to hold back laughter, or maybe derision.

"It's burnt," Grantaire laments.

"No, no, it's…" Éponine's lips twitch. She wraps her arms around her ribs like if she just squeezes herself tight enough, she can hold the laughter back. "It's just nicely browned, that's all." 

He just looks at her, until the moments stretch between them and her mirth finally wins out, laughter shaking its way out of her despite the quelling hand she presses to her mouth.

"It's perfectly edible," she tells him. "And I think maybe next time, I'm going to put you in charge of breakfast, rather than dinner. Oatmeal's pretty difficult to catastrophically screw up."

Despite it all, though, she forks a chicken breast onto her plate, spoons the sauce over it, and carries it over to the table without any indication that she thinks maybe she's about to eat something terrible. Grantaire loves her for that.

In the morning, she shows him how to make oatmeal. It definitely seems much more suited to his level of skill in the kitchen — or lack thereof — and she leaves him stirring the pot as it heats while she showers.

"I'll be five minutes, tops," she says when he throws a worried look at the oatmeal. "Just keep stirring it and you can't possibly run into trouble."

Grantaire nods and does as she says, standing over the heat coming off the stove while the oatmeal bubbles and turns thick.

He's just starting to suspect that maybe she's got a particularly loose definition of five minutes, and wonder how he's supposed to know if it's ready to come off the stove, when there's a knock at the door. 

He turns toward it, frowning, and after a moment of indecision, he gives the oatmeal one more good stir and then goes to answer the door. Last time it had been Enjolras, and it had been important. It could be important again.

He opens the door and finds Combeferre standing on Éponine's porch, his hand lifted to knock again. He blinks quickly at Grantaire, then smiles, broad and warm. "Hello. Is Éponine in?"

"She's in the shower. You aren't here to ask her _more_ questions about the seals, are you? If she had anything to tell you, I promise, she would have."

"Oh— No." Combeferre's eyes go wide and startled. "I just brought her something, as a thank you for sparing the time for me, I suppose." He tips his head, sliding his gaze past Grantaire. "May I come in? I don't mind waiting for her."

Grantaire's not sure that Éponine will thank him for allowing someone into her home like this, especially when she seemed little pleased by his presence before. But Combeferre is part of Enjolras's group and Grantaire's curiosity is burning in him like an ember, so he steps back and allows Combeferre in for his own reasons. "She should only be a few minutes," he says as he returns to the kitchen and Combeferre follows him in. "But then again, she said that ten minutes ago, so there's no telling." He hurries back to the stove and to stirring the oatmeal, peering into the pot. It doesn't smell burned, he thinks, and hopes that his momentary inattention won't have ruined their breakfast just like he had the chicken.

"That's all right, I've got time," Combeferre says, and settles down into a chair at the kitchen table, sitting sideways in it with one arm slung over the back so he can stay facing Grantaire.

"Have you spoken with Enjolras yet?" Grantaire asks anxiously. He glances over at Combeferre just in time to catch his eyebrow quirking up and his mouth pulling into a crooked smile.

"This morning, most recently. We haven't had--"

"Grantaire?" Éponine's voice comes down the hall, and she follows shortly after it, a towel wrapped around her and another twisted in her hair. "Who are you talking to? --Oh."

Combeferre's cheeks turn dark with a flush. He stares at Éponine for an instant before dropping his gaze down. "I'm sorry," he says, strangled. "I came unannounced. I should have made sure Grantaire warned you."

"It's all right." Éponine doesn't quite sound like she means it, but Grantaire isn't sure if that's just because he knows her well enough to tell the difference, or if the lie is obvious to Combeferre, too. She edges backwards, back down the hallway. "I'm just going to go get dressed. Grantaire, take that oatmeal off the stove before it turns into glue, for heaven's sake. I'll just be a minute," she adds to the empty air between the two of them, and then vanishes back down the hallway.

"How embarrassing," Combeferre murmurs, still staring hard at the floor even though Éponine's gone. "Do you think she's going to feel awkward around me now?"

Grantaire shakes his head and slides the pan of oatmeal off of the burner. Selkies don't get worked up about nudity as a general rule, not the way that humans do. "She's probably just worried that she embarrassed you." Though that doesn't sound much like Éponine, either. She's not the sort to coddle the feelings of strangers.

True to her word, Éponine's only gone a moment before she returns, wearing a loose shirt and well-worn jeans, her hair hanging wet and wavy about her shoulders. She doesn't waste any time, either, just fixes Combeferre with her gaze and demands, "What brings you back here? I thought your questioning the other day was quite exhaustive. Did you have more to ask me about?"

"Oh, no, not at all." Combeferre shifts on the chair, digging into the pocket of his coat, and pulls out a squat, round metal tin that rattles gently when he holds it out towards Éponine. "I brought this for you."

Éponine stares at the tin like he's offering her a sea serpent. Finally she moves, coming toward him just until she can take the tin from him and then retreating again. She holds it in her hands and frowns down at it, and her expression starts out belligerent, but shifts rapidly through surprise and wariness before settling at last on confusion.

"What is this?" Her voice makes Grantaire startle and turn toward her. It's gone soft and a little vulnerable in her bewilderment, and he's never heard her speak that way to anyone who wasn't a selkie, with all the hard edges and prickly defenses worn away.

"It's that tea I was telling you about. Darjeeling, from the Musain. I was there the other day anyway, so I thought I'd pick some up for you, let you try it for yourself."

He was there the other day at Enjolras's meeting, same as Grantaire was, and if all he'd wanted was for her to try the tea, he could have given it to Grantaire that night for him to deliver to her. But still, he doesn't ask any questions, doesn't give any indication that the gift is an attempt to soften her up for some other request. He just sits in Éponine's kitchen chair, watching her with a slight smile hovering about the corners of his mouth while she pries the tin's lid off and breathes deeply of the tea within.

"It smells good," she says grudgingly, and frowns at him.

"Good." Combeferre's smile spreads, warm and guileless. "Let me know when you've had a chance to try it. I'm curious to know what you think. They've got other blends, if that one doesn't quite do it for you--"

"Thank you," she says, and Grantaire's not sure if she says it because she means it, or because human manners expect it, or because she's just trying to get him to stop rambling at her. She moves across the kitchen to tuck the tin away with the rest of her teas, and stands there out of his line of sight for a moment, and just breathes.

Grantaire turns his attention back to Combeferre, to cover for her lapse. "You were saying something, a minute ago. About hearing word from Enjolras?"

"Right, of course. I beg your pardon. Courfeyrac hasn't had the chance to work the full depth of his techno magic, that'll take him a few days, but he has turned up something. We're pretty sure the name Jondrette is an alias. Courf's search isn't comprehensive yet, but so far, they haven't turned up in any of the databases he's searched prior to a few years ago."

Combeferre looks like he's pleased with the discovery, but Grantaire's heart sinks, a leaden weight deep in his gut. "Then we can't find them," he says quietly. "We've got nothing."

Combeferre clucks his tongue, scolding. "Don't discount Courfeyrac so quickly. He has found something. It's not much yet, just a thread. But it only takes one thread to start the whole fabric unravelling. He found a name that's turned up a couple times in association with the Jondrettes. We're not sure what the link between them is, but there's bound to be one. As soon as Courf's finished working his wizardry, we'll be able to figure out who these Thenardiers are and--"

Behind Grantaire, something shatters. They both jump, and Grantaire spins around to find Éponine staring down at the fragmented remains of one of her teacups. She has her hand spread open in front of her, blood oozing up from a few shallow cuts on her palm, and she stares at Grantaire with a stricken look.

"What?" Grantaire rushes to her, grabs the towel that hangs over the oven door's handle and presses it to the wounds. "What is it?"

She stares at him and gives a nearly-imperceptible shake of her head. "Christ, I'm sorry," she says, louder than necessary. "Clumsy of me. It just slipped right out of my hand."

"Ep--" Grantaire speaks in an undertone, but she cuts him off with another shake of her head all the same, and he breaks off just as the sound of footsteps approach behind him.

"Oh God," Combeferre says. "Éponine, are you all right?"

She sends a forced smile over Grantaire's shoulder. "Fine, thank you, I'm just an idiot."

"That's a lot of blood." It's not, but it is soaking through and staining the edge of the towel, so Combeferre's alarm is understandable, if misguided. "I'm going to call Joly, he's a med student and I don't think he has class right now. He can be here inside of ten minutes."

"Oh Jesus, no, that isn't necessary."

Combeferre hesitates mid-dial. He frowns with deep unhappiness, but he stops. "Please," he says. "You should let him take a look. If you need stitches--"

"I don't. I'll be fine, I promise."

Combeferre sighs and puts the phone away, even though he looks like he hates it. "Will you let me help you bandage them up, at least? You're down a hand, and it'll be much easier if you let me loan you mine."

Grantaire expects her to send him off with a stern refusal and a scathing remark for his inability to listen to what she's telling him. Instead, she gives him a narrow-eyed look of consideration, then nods and shakes Grantaire's hand off. "All right. Let's see if your med school friend has managed to teach you anything, shall we?" She jerks her head toward the hallway and then stats down it, trusting him to follow. 

He follows. Grantaire trails them down the hall, shocked by Éponine's behavior. He keeps his distance, though, enough that he can hear the two of them talking quietly together, but not make out the words. He wants to edge closer so he can _hear_ what they're saying, but propriety keeps him back. It's a human notion, but Combeferre his human, and Éponine acts like she is more often than not, so he gives them as much of their privacy as he can bear to.

They emerge ten minutes later with Éponine's hand swathed in bandages. "I interrupted your breakfast, I should let you get back to it," Combeferre is saying as he moves toward the door. "But I'll see you at our next meeting?"

Grantaire expects her to say no to that, if nothing else. But it's a day of firsts, because she nods and says, "I wouldn't miss it."

Grantaire waits until he's left and the door's shut behind him, and then he turns on Éponine, one brow raised. "What was _that_?"

She sighs sharply. "Don't gloat, Grantaire."

"No, I'm serious. What was that? I invited you to come to the meetings and you refused." He grins and rocks his shoulder against hers, letting his tone shift toward teasing. "Is it because of who did the asking? That's the only thing that's changed. Do you mean to tell me that Combeferre is more persuasive than I am?"

She doesn't rouse to his baiting, just shoots him a quelling look. "The Thenardiers," she says, like it explains everything. "I know them. Well. Knew them."

"You _what?_ "

"I worked for them for a time, when I first came to land. It's hard to find work when you don't have the usual human documents, and they were willing to look the other way."

"Small wonder, if they're stealing selkie pelts. _God._ "

"We don't know that." Éponine wraps her arms around her ribs, looking small and overwhelmed. "They might— Christ. I don't know." She squeezes her eyes shut and draws a series of unsteady breaths. "Maybe they are. I don't know. But I have to find out. That's why I said yes." She opens her eyes and glares at him. " _Not_ because it was Combeferre asking."

Grantaire would keep teasing, if she looked a little less haggard. If they didn't have the specter of the stolen pelts hanging over their heads already. Instead, he just pulls her into an embrace, careful of her hand, and leans his cheek against the crown of her head. "We'll find them. We're already getting closer. And what you know about them will get us closer yet. We'll find them." _We'll find your pelt._

"I know. And I'm going to help you."

He couldn't ask for any better aid. With the two of them on the case, he's never felt better about their odds. Between the two of them, they'll find the Thenardiers, they'll find the pelts, and they'll be back in the sea before they know it. For the first time since Enjolras snatched Grantaire's pelt out of his hand and set him down this path, Grantaire feels like this might actually be possible.


	8. Chapter 8

It's three days to the next meeting of Les Amis, and every hour that Grantaire's forced to wait chafes. He uses Éponine's phone to text Enjolras and Combeferre asking after any new developments, until even Combeferre loses patience and reminds him that anything they learn will be passed on just as soon as they're able.

_Has Éponine tried the tea yet?_ he asks at the end of his last text. _They just got an Earl Grey in that she might like, if the darjeeling isn't to her taste._

Éponine has been rationing out her darjeeling, allowing herself one cup a day and then lingering over it, inhaling the steam like it's the finest ambrosia. Grantaire had teased her about it once, when she'd seemed in a good enough mood to be receptive to it, and she'd fixed a razor-sharp glare on him and snapped that fine teas should be savored, no matter whose hand they came from, and Grantaire had dropped it after that. At Combeferre's inquiry, he groans and throws the phone back to Éponine. Let her answer his questions, if she's of a mind to. He has more important concerns than playing intermediary between them.

When at last the night of the Les Amis meeting comes, Grantaire half expects Éponine to renege and decide to stay home after all. But she shrugs on her coat and wraps a scarf about her neck with a grim-faced air, like a warrior donning armor before entering the field of battle, and her expression defies him to say a word while she waits for him by the front door.

He's not that great a fool. He only offers her his arm, and together they walk the short distance through town to the Musain.

The shop is a riot of noise and activity when they arrive. Late, Grantaire fears, but no -- Enjolras is sitting with his head bowed together with Courfeyrac and Combeferre, a laptop on the table before them, its glowing screen illuminating their faces with an unnatural light. He glances up when Grantaire and Éponine make their entrance, catches Grantaire's eye and gives a nod of acknowledgment, but before Grantaire can make his way through the shop to their side to ask after any new developments, Éponine gasps beside him, and her fingers dig into his arm like claws.

"Oh god," she breathes, faint as a whisper. "I didn't think..."

Grantaire follows her gaze to where two of the Amis sit, a man and a woman, their chairs pulled close to one another and their hands clasped together. "What is it?" Grantaire asks her, and struggles to recall the man's name.

"Marius," she says like her heart is breaking, and Grantaire pulls his gaze away from the pair to look down at her. "He-- He's--"

"The one who lost your pelt," Grantaire breathes, because who else could it be? And it's a kinder way to say it than _the one who rejected your gift_ or _the one who broke your heart_.

"Oh god, this was a mistake. I shouldn't have come." She turns blindly, and would bolt for the door but for the hand Grantaire places on her arm. She stills, but quivers. Her gaze seeks him out, desperate, pleading.

"Your pelt," he reminds her. "The Thenardiers."

She shuts her eyes and exhales like even that hurts.

"He's just a man. Just a human. You won't let him stand in the way of you getting back what's yours, will you?"

"No," she says quietly, and then again, gaining strength. "No."

Grantaire nods and guides her over to a table, the one he'd sat in last time, with it's broad window and its view of the ocean in the distance. He lets her have the seat closest to the window, and takes the one beside her, and grips her hand in his when she wraps her fingers around the table's edge so tight her knuckles turn pale.

She's staring at them again. They're leaning in close, smiling at each other like they hold the moon and the stars in their palms, speaking quietly like the words between them are secret and sacred. Beside Grantaire, Éponine vibrates like a plucked string.

He's just trying to figure out how to keep her from bolting again when movement at the corners of his vision catches his attention. He turns his gaze toward it, away from Marius and the woman he loves better than Éponine, to find Combeferre coming toward them, smiling and with two mugs of tea in his hands.

"They got my order wrong," he says as he settles down in the chair opposite Éponine's. "And they insisted I take them both, or they'd just end up dumping the wrong order down the drain, and I'd hate to waste it. Would you like it? It's orange pekoe, it's great stuff, just not what I was in the mood for tonight."

Éponine gives the steaming mug a flat look, then turns it on Combeferre. "That seems unlikely."

"It's the god's honest truth." He raises a hand like he's taking an oath. "You can ask the barista, if you'd like, she was mortified about the mistake."

Éponine grunts, dubious, but curves her fingers around the mug all the same, and doesn't rise to go interrogate the girl behind the counter. Her gaze stays on Combeferre over the cup's rim, considering and more than a little wary. Grantaire would be inclined to send Combeferre away, off to the other side of the Musain where he won't upset her, except that at least with him here, her attention is on something other than Marius and the woman he chose instead of her.

While she sips the tea and hums her approval, Joly drops into the table's other chair, and Bossuet grabs an unoccupied one from nearby and joins them. "Grantaire!" Bossuet clasps his arm. "We hear you had some excitement with our fearless leader the other day. Nearly got yourselves caught breaking and entering, did you?"

"Not exactly," Grantaire says. "We broke and entered, but we weren't almost caught. We hid, and the man had no idea we were there."

"That's not how I heard it." Bossuet's grin is broad and conspiratorial. He leans in close across the table like he's imparting a great secret. "I hear you two were trapped in close quarters together--"

"You didn't hear it from me." Grantaire raises a brow at him. "Did Enjolras tell you so? It was only the two of us who'd know. Anyone else you might have heard it from wasn't there, and that doesn't seem his style."

Bossuet just grins wider, and winks at Grantaire across the table. "You might be surprised."

Grantaire's face is hot, his skin prickling. He leans back, away from Bossuet and all his suggestiveness, and turns his attention to Joly instead. "Éponine hurt her hand the other day. Combeferre bandaged her up, and did a fine job I'm sure, but would you mind taking a look at it, just for our own piece of mind?"

Éponine stares at him like he's a traitor. Joly's eyes go wide and round with concern, and before she can protest he's got her hand between both of his, carefully peeling away the bandages as Combeferre scoots his chair in closer and they consult together on the injury and Combeferre's treatment.

"It didn't seem deep enough to need stitches," Combeferre says once the last wrappings of gauze come away, revealing the wounds across Éponine's palm. "I'd have sent her to you or to the hospital if they had, I swear it."

Joly nods acceptance, or perhaps agreement, and presses the edges of the wounds gently. When Éponine hisses and snatches her hand away, glaring at him dangerously, he's gives an apologetic grimace and reaches for it again. "It's hard to make that determination now, with a few days of healing behind it. I trust your judgment, though, and they seem to be healing nicely in any case." He nods and pulls his messenger bag onto his lap, and pulls from it a veritable pharmacy's-worth of gauze and bandages and antiseptic ointments. "This one has lidocaine in it, so it'll help with the pain," he tells her as he smears it on.

Éponine consents to let him rebandage her hand, though she sighs and adopts an impatient air about the whole thing. When Joly's finished and has peppered her with a string of instructions for how to care for it, as well as pressed a scribbled-on napkin into her hands and insisted that she calls him if there's any change for the worse, her gaze slides sideways off of him like a ship without an anchor to keep it in place. Grantaire can tell by the way she stiffens and the lines of her face go even more unhappy than usual when her wandering gaze has fixed itself again on Marius and Cosette.

Before he can say something to try to draw her mind from them, and from her broken heart, Combeferre claims her attention with a question of his own. "Tell me, what do you think of the orange pekoe?"

Éponine starts talking about tannins and vegetal undertones and Grantaire doesn't know enough about tea to know what any of it means — he just drinks what Éponine sets down in front of him and trusts it to be decent — but Éponine looks cautiously pleased to have found someone who shares the vocabulary, and it's a nice change from looking shellshocked by Marius, so Grantaire leaves them to it.

It's not the most well-organized of meetings. Grantaire's unsure if that's their norm, or if it's just Éponine's presence and Combeferre's collusion that keeps things from coming into focus. The two of them move on from the topic of tea to something else that Grantaire tries to be polite enough not to eavesdrop on, but he does pay just enough attention to notice the way that Combeferre seems to be listening more often than talking, his chin on his hand and his attention on Éponine, and every so often she says something that makes his gaze go sharp and his fingers drum against his jawline, and he'll lean forward to say, " _Really._ That's fascinating, I always felt the opposite," and engage her in debate that's so gentle it hardly even seems to warrant the name.

Bossuet and Joly, meanwhile, seem determined to preoccupy Grantaire's attention while they have it, mostly badgering him with questions about his and Enjolras's adventures in Montparnasse's home. Grantaire's not sure what sort of details they're looking for, but none of the ones he has seem to satisfy. On the other side of their group, Enjolras is on his feet and speaking with those of the Amis who are seated around him and undistracted, but it's hardly an oration.

Grantaire waits for a lull in the banter with Joly and Bossuet, then excuses himself and slips over to join Enjolras. He seems startled to see Grantaire pulling up a chair with those seated near him, then quietly pleased.

"The Thenardiers," Grantaire says quietly. Sometimes people just need a bit of nudging to keep them on track.

"Right, yes. Courfeyrac's still working on digging up all the skeletons in their closet, but they're definitely linked to the Jondrettes somehow, and they—"

"Éponine knows them. Knew them."

It stops Enjolras mid-sentence. Beside Grantaire, Courfeyrac sits up from his boneless slouch and leans toward Grantaire like a hound on a scent. " _Does she?_ Will she let me pick her brain a little? This would be so much easier if I just had a few specific details, something to help me start filtering the signal from the noise…"

Grantaire lifts a shoulder in a shrug. "You can ask her." She's still deep in conversation with Combeferre, though, and sipping at a fresh, steaming mug of tea, though Grantaire doesn't recall her getting up to get it.

"You can ask when she's done with Combeferre," Enjolras says. He pulls up a chair as well, and drops down opposite Grantaire, an intent look about him. "Meanwhile, what do _you_ know about the Thenardiers?"

Grantaire blinks at him a moment. "That Éponine used to work for them. That's it. I'm from out of town, the only person here I know anything about at all is Éponine." And most of what he does know isn't the sort of information he's likely to trust to a human.

Enjolras's expression twists with frustration. He glances back at Éponine again and he's clearly yearning for the information she has. Grantaire wants the pelt thieves caught as much as Enjolras wants the supposed poachers stopped, but he can't help but bristle in Éponine's defense. "We'll need to speak with her, if not tonight then—"

"What we _need_ ," Courfeyrac says, leaning forward, "is a vacation."

Enjolras frowns at him, and Grantaire's scowling, too. They don't have the luxury of time off, every day that passes is another opportunity for a selkie's life to be destroyed, and another day closer to the moment when Grantaire's pelt will be too degraded to be of any use at all.

"Oh come on," Courfeyrac says, heavy with exasperation, though Enjolras hasn't spoken a word. "Just a mini vacation. One day. One _afternoon_. We can have a beach day, the whole lot of us. Come on, Enjolras, we've earned it, you know we have. A few hours isn't going to hurt your cause any."

"We can have a potluck," Jehan offers.

"We can have a bonfire!" Bahorel cries, his face bright with excitement even as a few others cry out their protests of that idea, Bossuet chief among them.

"We should keep working," Grantaire says, because someone must and no one else seems inclined to.

Enjolras sends him an approving look and Grantaire thinks perhaps the battle will be easily won. But then he looks out over the others with an indulgent smile and Grantaire realizes that it's already lost. "Fine, fine," he says, laughing as he relents. "We'll have a beach day. Tomorrow afternoon? How does that work for those with classes?"

There is brief, violent negotiation from those with scheduling conflicts, and eventually a time is settled on. Grantaire leaves them to it — he knows what a battle he can't win looks like when he sees it — and returns to his table. Bossuet and Joly have moved away to engage in the beach day planning, but Éponine and Combeferre are still there, still talking quietly. Éponine's got an intent look to her eye, but also a slight smile hovering about her mouth, so Grantaire leaves them to it and settles for sipping his own, tepid tea.

He waits until Éponine rises, to go order more tea or to get something to eat from the display case, and then he slides over into her vacated seat and eyes Combeferre across the width of the table. "Are you doing this out of genuine interest? Or just because you noticed she's upset and you're trying to keep her mind off of Marius?"

Combeferre's brow quirks up, but he doesn't react to the challenge in Grantaire's tone. His expression, if anything, turns relieved. "So there _is_ something going on there. It seemed like there might be, but I didn't think it was my place to ask."

He's right, and it's probably not Grantaire's place to volunteer the information, either. Éponine will tell him, or she won't, but she won't thank him for doing the task for her. "Whatever the reason… thank you. It's been good for her, tonight."

Combeferre's smile is slow, like the sun dawning, and just as brilliant. "I'm glad. She deserves to smile more."

Éponine used to be full of smiles, before she came on land. Grantaire can hardly remember what that was like anymore.

"Will you come to the beach with us tomorrow?"

Grantaire sighs, hedges. "It sounds like it's a Les Amis thing. I'd just be a third wheel, I think."

"Oh, don't be so coy." Combeferre's foot nudges his knee beneath the table. "You belong there as much as any of us. You've come to several meetings, you joined Enjolras on one of his escapades… Face it, you're one of us now."

Grantaire is sure Combeferre means to reassure, but his words do nothing more than send a chill through him that seeps right through to his bones.


	9. Chapter 9

At two o'clock the next afternoon, there's a pounding at Éponine's door that, when Grantaire answers it, turns out to be Bossuet and Joly in garishly-colored swim shorts, standing on her porch beaming at him. "Beach day!" Joly cries and grabs Grantaire's arm to drag him out of the house.

"Wait." Grantaire digs his heels in. "Éponine." He figured that getting forced into joining the activities was an inevitability, so he's not unprepared. But he made Éponine promise to accompany him the night before, and he's not going to let these two drag him off and get her out of her obligations.

"I'm right here," she says with a sigh, like she knows the futility of fighting. She's wearing shorts over a swimsuit that ties behind her neck, her hair thrown up in a messy bun, with a bag thrown over her shoulder that has sunglasses and sunscreen and the book that she's been reading lately. She looks like any number of human women Grantaire has seen at the beach, watching them from the waves offshore with the rest of his kind. She looks like she belongs with them, and that's a thought that frightens Grantaire as much as it upsets him.

"Great!" Joly is all smiles. He grabs them both and pulls them out of the house and off the porch, toward the car that Bossuet has left idling at the curb. "Let's go."

It's a short drive down to the beach. Grantaire would have been happier walking it, but he's learning to pick his battles when it comes to these humans. Better to let Bossuet drive them all, than to suffer their bewildered looks over his unusual behavior.

Everyone else is already there when they arrive. Jehan and Feuilly are halfway through construction of an impressive sand castle, complete with turrets and moat and a miniature drawbridge built out of scavenged driftwood. Bahorel is covered in sand and chasing Courfeyrac through the surf with a fierce bellow that's belied by the ear-to-ear grin stretching across his face, and Courfeyrac for his part is laughing so hard he can barely stay on his feet, much less keep ahead of Bahorel. It's inevitable that Bahorel catches him, and when he does, only moments after Grantaire and Éponine and Joly and Bossuet reach the beach, he throws Courfeyrac over his shoulder, wades out into the ocean until it's up to his waist, and then dumps Courfeyrac unceremoniously into the water.

Courfeyrac comes up laughing and swearing revenge, and soon the chase is on again, filling the beach with the sound of laughter and their playful shrieking.

"Are you guys going to come?" Joly asks as he finds a place up on the dry sand to drop all his bags. It's a rhetorical question it seems, though, because he and Bossuet take off toward the others without waiting for a response. Still, Grantaire turns to Éponine, brows raised and waiting for her answer.

She shakes her head and looks along the beach where it edges up against the foot of the cliffs. "I'm going to go stake out a spot first. Go on. I've got plenty to keep me occupied."

He'd rather stay with her than go join in the rough-housing the others are engaging in, but she pulls her bag up higher onto her shoulder and strides off through the sand without waiting for a response from him. And he's the one who forced her to come here, after all, so he supposes it would be unfair of him to ask her to keep him company as well, when she so clearly doesn't wish to.

Of all the Amis, only two aren't splashing in the water or running through the sand. Combeferre has a towel spread up where the sand is dry and he's in no danger of being reached by the waves, and Enjolras is sitting in the wet sand below the tide line, his knees bent and his bare feet half buried in the sand, sitting far enough back from the water that only the strongest waves climb high enough up the beach to reach him and swirl about his ankles.

Grantaire walks towards him and crouches down nearby, staring out across the waves rolling endlessly in toward shore. Enjolras turns his head enough to glance at him and offer a brief smile of greeting. "I'm glad you came."

"Are you?" Grantaire frowns at him, surprised by the sentiment.

Enjolras just turns his attention back out to the water, like the comment doesn't hold any weight at all. "Do you know, I don't think I've seen you smile, not once since we've met." His expression grows thoughtful, distant. "Well. Maybe once, but I don't think you meant it. In any case, you could clearly use a day off. You've earned one just as much as any of the others."

"We could be using this time to find the Thenardiers," Grantaire says, petulant despite himself.

Enjolras's gaze slides to him again, the corners of his eyes creased with laugh lines, his smile pulled into a crooked curve. "Careful letting the others hear you talk that way. They'll say you're like me, and they won't think it's a compliment." But it's clear from the warmth in his voice and the light in his eyes that Enjolras _does_.

Grantaire lets out a sharp breath, glad to have found an ally in this, at least. "If you'd rather be working, if you'd rather they all be working, then why agree?"

"Because Courfeyrac was right. They've earned a day off. Because I might be willing to work myself to the bone, but that doesn't mean I don't know it isn't good for a person. Because, at the end of the day, I can't make anyone do anything, and if I didn't grant them a day off eventually they'd just take one for themselves, and resent me for the necessity. They'll work harder tomorrow for having had the opportunity to enjoy themselves today."

Grantaire takes all that to mean that Enjolras has chosen to sacrifice his own desires for the sake of the group, but in truth would rather be working. He sidesteps across the sand, shifting closer while maintaining his crouch. "Let them have their day, then. You can tell me what else Courfeyrac has learned about the Thenardiers, can't you?"

Enjolras looks at Grantaire, and then past him to where the others are enjoying themselves. He looks torn, and then he sighs and scrubs a hand through his hair. "Courfeyrac found an address. It's an old one, we've already confirmed that they don't live there any longer, but it's a start. We can use that to track them down to where they live now, Courfeyrac just needs a few more days."

"And Montparnasse--"

"Hey!" Courfeyrac skids to a stop as he goes tearing past them, chased by Bahorel once more and about to be flanked by Joly and Bossuet as well. The abrupt stop throws up sand and leaves the other three scrambling to change their trajectories and slow their speed before they crash into Grantaire and Enjolras, or each other.

Courfeyrac stalks up towards them, a look in his eye that would be fearsome if it weren't for the kelp caught tangled in his hair. He levels an imperious finger at them both in turn. "This is a fun day. No work talk allowed."

Grantaire leans back on his hands so he can blink up at Courfeyrac. "We were just talking to each other, you could have kept having your fun."

"No work talk allowed, for anyone. It's the rules. I'll give you a freebie, since you're new, but you." He turns on Enjolras with a look that's crushingly disappointed. "You know better. And you know what the punishment is for violating the sanctity of a fun day."

"Punishment?" Grantaire's liking the sound of this less and less by the second.

Enjolras sighs and adopts a long-suffering-but-indulgent expression that Grantaire finds mystifying. "Courfeyrac and Jehan--"

"And everyone," Courfeyrac adds firmly, in a tone that will suffer no argument.

"And everyone who _cares to_ "--Enjolras gives Courfeyrac a sharp, warning look that quells whatever protests he had been about to voice--"get to cover up anyone who violates the sanctity of a fun day with whatever sort of sand sculpture they like. Generally, the more embarrassing the better. Last time they made Feuilly into Ariel. They're law students," he adds with a glance at Grantaire, though Grantaire's not sure what his face must be doing in order to prompt that. "There's no use arguing."

"You can try," Courfeyrac agrees happily. "You'd lose. It's an ironclad verbal contract--"

"Just let me finish my conversation with Grantaire?"

Courfeyrac opens his mouth to protest, but Enjolras cuts him off. "The verbal contract didn't contain any stipulations about the time frame in which the penalty could be repaid. I could promise to do it a year from now and you'd have no legal recourse. I'm not, though, I'm just asking for five minutes, so you might at least grant me that."

Courfeyrac levels a finger at Enjolras. "You've been studying our ways, haven't you? Tricky bastard."

"I learned from the best," Enjolras counters with a bland smile, and then turns his attention back to Grantaire. "Now then--"

Grantaire shakes his head. "Don't sorry about it. There'll be time later, and I don't trust Courfeyrac to grant me clemency for a second infraction." He braces his hands in the damp sand and pushes himself to his feet. "I'm going to go check in on Éponine."

She's set her blanket up near Combeferre's towel, though with a careful distance between them as though to prevent anyone from getting the idea that they might be sitting together. The ruse is ruined, though, because she's sitting sideways on her blanket, her book open-faced but forgotten on her knees as she leans forward to hold a conversation with Combeferre that's too low to make out, even as Grantaire gets near.

She glances up when Grantaire's shadow falls across them. Combeferre does, too, leaning back on one hand and shielding his eyes from the glare of the sun with the other. There's a beat where he must be trying to make Grantaire out despite the sun shining in from his back, and then his face breaks into a smile. "Grantaire, hello. Pull up a corner." He pats his towel in invitation. "Éponine and I were just talking about you."

Grantaire shoots Éponine a look, but she just counters it with a bland smile. "Nothing too alarming, I promise."

"I was being nosy, I'm afraid." Combeferre says it with a smile and a helpless shrug. "But she said you're the one who convinced her to come today, so I'm grateful for that."

Éponine leans back on her elbows, slipping her sunglasses into place and turning her face up to the bright sun. "I told him you forced me, actually."

"It's more or less true," Grantaire admits, and settles onto the corner of Combeferre's towel because he seems to still be expecting it.

"Well, I'm grateful to you all the same. If you hadn't urged her to join us, I'd be quite lonely up here all by myself."

"You're with all your friends."

"Ah, yes. Well, they're all…" He grimaces delicately and waves a hand toward where Courfeyrac is clinging to Bahorel's broad back, shrieking as Bahorel races through the knee-high surf, trying to keep them both away from a pink-cheeked Cosette.

Grantaire watches them for a minute, and then turns to face Combeferre. "Swimming?"

Combeferre's smile is bashful and a little chagrined.

"But… you're a _marine biologist_."

The smile slips, spreads, turns into something brighter in order to hide the spark of flint that lies behind it. "It is actually possible to want to study the creatures that swim in the sea without wanting to take a dip with them yourself. Likely, even. Ask Joly to tell you what an irukandji sting does to a person some day, and then we'll see how you feel about getting wet."

Grantaire just stares at him. He can't imagine anything worse than being kept from the water, not even death. A jellyfish sting would be a small price to pay. He'd suffer a hundred right now, if it meant getting his pelt back and being able to return.

Combeferre shrugs easily, lifting just one shoulder. "Who knows. Maybe someday I'll learn, if there's a good enough reason to. Some fascinating fish that can only be studied in its natural environment, perhaps. But until then…"

Grantaire shifts his gaze to Éponine. He finds her still leaning back, soaking in the sun. "You're not going in either?" he asks her quietly.

She sits and pushes her sunglasses up, so he can see her eyes. So she can meet his gaze and he can read all the pain and grief and torment there, even as she says, "No, I don't think so," as light and easy as if it doesn't matter at all. "It's easier this way."

He thinks he knows what she means without her having to elaborate. Easier not to have what she wants at all, than to be granted a taste of it but only for a moment, and be forced to give it up again. He'd almost agree.

Almost.

"You are?" she asks him, and her gaze is solemn even as her words are casual.

He swallows down the painful knot in his throat. "I have to. I can't not."

She nods her understanding and waves him on. "Go on, then. Have fun. I don't need a babysitter, I'm in good company."

That makes Combeferre smile, at least, and a ghost of a smile flits across her face in answer. Grantaire levers himself to his feet and starts down toward the waves, but he lays a hand on Éponine's shoulder as he passes, and she reaches up and gives his a squeeze before he moves on.

He stops by where Enjolras had stationed himself, though he's gone now, moved down the beach and crouching by Feuilly in discussion over some aspect or another of his sand castle, and toes off his shoes and pulls his shirt off over his head. He leaves them all in a pile at their spot and hen strides out into the surf.

The water laps around his ankles with his first step and it steals his breath, but it's not from the cold. It feels like coming home. He continues out until the water's up to mid-thigh, and then he can't hold back anymore. He dives into the wave breaking before him and swims with long, powerful strokes, gliding beneath the surface. He can hear the waves crashing onto the shore, a rumble that seems to come from all around him, working into his very bones. He knows that rhythm like the beat of his own heart.

He only comes up for air when he has to, when his lungs are burning and his muscles protesting, and he resents the necessity of it. He's hundreds of yards from shore, far enough out that the waves are still just swells, bobbing him up and down, and the people on the beach look like distant pinpricks. He thinks some of the Amis may be looking out at him, thinks he can make out someone pointing, but it's hard to tell from this distance, and harder to care.

He turns and swims parallel to the shore, all too aware of this human body's physical limitations. He wishes he could swim for miles, but instead he just powers through the waves until he starts to feel weak and short of breath, and then he lets the swells carry him back close to shore.

As the swells start to break and turn to actual waves, one crashes over his head and sends him tumbling beneath the water, disoriented, the world turned to a mass of swirling water and air bubbles. He doesn't panic, though, just waits to surface, and pushes his hair back off his face when he does.

He's closer to shore now, close enough to make out the people on the beach. Most are still playing and laughing together, Éponine and Combeferre are still sitting together high up on the beach, away from the water. And it takes Grantaire a moment to identify the figure standing up to mid-calf in the water, staring out at him, because it's Enjolras. It's his golden hair, tousled by the wind, that gives him away, and Grantaire figures there's little point in pretending he didn't notice he was being watched, so he changes direction and swims in toward him, until the water is shallow enough he can get his feet beneath him and walk the rest of the way.

Enjolras doesn't say anything as Grantaire nears, just continues to watch him in quiet contemplation. It's only when Grantaire's reached him and taken up a position at his side, staring out over the waves he'd just swum through, that Enjolras finally speaks. "You look very happy out there."

Grantaire gives him a swift glance. "Do I?" He didn't feel particularly happy. He felt homesick. He felt crushed beneath the weight of everything he wanted that he couldn't have.

Enjolras nods and keeps his gaze out on the horizon. "A great deal happier than I've ever seen you look on dry land."

This feels dangerous, like Enjolras might come too close to the truth just by that one simple observation. Grantaire shifts uncomfortably, folds his arms across his chest and stares out across the water with a frown gathering between his brows, unsure what to say.

Enjolras laughs quietly. "There, you see? Already you look miserable again. You grew up near the water, didn't you?"

"You could say that."

He nods like that explains everything about Grantaire he could possibly need to know. "Courfeyrac's like that. Born and raised here, in a house two steps from the beach. It's like something in him starts to die, if he's kept away from the water too long. It's why we try to have days like this, at least semi-regularly. I know Les Amis can be demanding, and God knows I know it can consume a person. It's good to give everyone a chance to unwind, and remember what it's like to be a person instead of just part of a cause."

"What about you?" Grantaire asks quietly, turning to look at him better. "What do you do to remind yourself what it's like to be a person?"

Enjolras's mouth pulls into a wry smile. "Courfeyrac would tell you that mostly what I do is fail."

"That's not an answer."

He sighs and pulls a hand through his hair, though it does little to repair the wind's disheveling. "I'm not sure. Courfeyrac has the water, and Combeferre his books. I'm still looking for mine, I guess. There isn't much I do for myself that doesn't leave me painfully aware of how much more I could be doing for the cause."

Grantaire looks out at the others, frolicking and laughing and, to all appearances, having the time of their lives. "But you do this for them anyway."

"It's good for them. Good for morale. I can't let them all turn into hyper-focused workaholics like me, can I?" He smiles like it's a joke, but the tone of his words is as bleak as anything.

Courfeyrac starts towards them, calling Enjolras's name and waving a small plastic shovel, and Enjolras groans. "The things I do for morale," he says with a self-deprecating smile. "Here." He shoves something into Grantaire's hands — a wallet, made of soft, well-worn leather. "Don't let anyone run off with that, all right? Last time Courfeyrac got his hands on my wallet he returned it with a fake ID as a joke, and I nearly got arrested when I accidentally handed it to the cop who was writing me a ticket."

"I promise," Grantaire says, bemused.

Enjolras nods, squares his shoulders, and starts off to meet Courfeyrac like a man determined to face his execution with grace. Grantaire watches him go for a moment, watches him lie down in the sand and allow Courfeyrac and Jehan to start heaping sand over him with the most disgruntled expression of tolerance that Grantaire has ever witnessed.

He's not proud to admit how long it takes for the thought to occur to him. That Enjolras is indisposed, that his own promise guarantees that he'll remain immobile beneath Courfeyrac's sand sculpture until he's satisfied itself. That Grantaire has Enjolras's wallet, and with it his address, and a solid length of time in which he can be sure that Enjolras's house will be unattended, and Grantaire's pelt unguarded.

He edges backwards, away from the group. With every step, he feels certain that one of the Amis will notice his retreat and call him back, or demand an explanation, and then it will all be for naught. But luck is with him, for once, and he manages to make it all the way up off the beach to the street above.

As soon as he's out of sight of the others, he turns and he runs.


	10. Chapter 10

Enjolras's home is the antithesis of Montparnasse's. The exterior is well-kept, the yard maintained and groomed, not painstakingly but enough to look neat and tidy. Grantaire peers in through one of the side windows, a hand cupped against the glass to shield his eyes, and finds tat inside, it looks much the same. There is a little bit of clutter, a small tower of books on the arm of the couch, a cluster of used coffee cups on the counter next to the sink, but for the most part everything's clean and tidy inside, too.

Grantaire recalls too well what Enjolras said at Montparnasse's, about how petty criminals are unlikely to leave their homes open and carelessly unlocked. Enjolras isn't a petty criminal, but he _does_ carry a set of lockpicks, and Grantaire can't see him as the sort to leave his home unprotected, either. Still, he makes a circuit around the house and checks windows and doors, just to be sure. 

He's resigned, but unsurprised, when every door and window is locked fast. The tracks of the windows even have blocks of wood in them, to keep them from sliding open even should they have been left unlocked in a careless moment.

The only means of entry left to him is a forceful one. Would it be better to break a window, or to force the door? 

Either way, Enjolras will know something is amiss immediately. Grantaire won't have long to seize his pelt and effect his escape. And there will be no returning once he's accomplished it. 

He won't be able to stay, if he can't find his way in by less obvious means. He'll have no choice but to leave for the sea immediately, and to leave Éponine here, trapped, peltless. To abandon all the selkies who have gone missing, who will continue to go missing, so that he can return home with his pelt in safety.

It's almost enough to turn him from his purpose. Almost, but not quite. He's so close, his pelt is so near, and he doesn't have the strength of will to turn away from it, not now.

He decides on the door, in the end. The sound of an impact against it will be less alarming to any nosy neighbors than that of shattering glass, and he doesn't relish the idea of cutting himself on the shards of a broken window. 

Enjolras's front door is sheltered from the casual glance by the little covered porch that encloses it, with a few steps leading up and a pair of charming posts at either corner. He has potted plants on the porch which add further cover, and Grantaire takes advantage of it to hunker down, brace his shoulder against the door just where the lock engages, and throw his weight against it. 

Mostly, all that that damages is his shoulder. Discomfort sings up through it, and down into his arm, but he grits his teeth and continues through it. He throws his weight against the door again, and again, until his shoulder is undoubtedly bruised and his breath is coming fast and heavy. He heard splintering that last time, though, and the thought that the door might be giving way bolsters him. 

He braces himself against the rail that encircles the porch and aims a kick at the door, right were all his previous blows have been directed. This time, the sound of cracking wood is unmistakeable, and the door gives way a little, bowing in. Grantaire can see where, rather than breaking the door frame, it's the door itself that's begun to give, wood splintering around the lock from the force of Grantaire's blows.

Two more strong kicks and the door gives way completely, swinging in and leaving the lock hanging awkwardly from the door frame. Grantaire slides inside and swings the door shut behind him quickly, so that it will give as much the appearance of normality as possible, should anyone glance over to investigate the source of the pounding. 

Inside, Enjolras's home is dim, but there's still enough light coming in from outside to see by, so Grantaire leaves the lights turned off, for the sake of stealth. He makes his way through the place quickly, reminded too well of when he and Enjolras had done just the same at Montparnasse's. That hadn't felt like an intrusion, but this... Unease coils within his breast. Violating the privacy of a man who is, by all accounts, a scoundrel and most likely party to the crimes being committed upon Grantaire's kind is one thing. Committing it upon a man whom Grantaire might call friend is another thing entirely, and it doesn't sit well. 

Grantaire shakes the mood off of himself with a frown and a quick motion. Friend Enjolras may be, but he's not more important than his freedom. His privacy isn't worth more than the safety and protection of Grantaire's pelt. 

He recalls the places that Enjolras looked, during their previous search, and starts there. The cabinets, the freezer, the refrigerator, the cupboards and spaces that seem too high to reach conveniently, or be used frequently. 

Nothing. 

He searches the kitchen, the living room, the bathroom even. By the time he finds himself hesitating before the door that must lead to Enjolras's bedroom, his stomach churns with panic. This is an even greater violation than all the rest -- and he has no choice. 

Éponine would scoff at him if she were here. She'd roll her eyes and tell him what a sentimental fool he was being, and stride right in as though it bore no significance at all. 

Éponine had given her pelt to a human, without any certainty that he loved her in return. Hers was not a model to emulate. 

With a moment to gather himself, Grantaire squares his shoulders, grasps the door handle, and steps inside. He can't make himself feel nothing about this last, final violation. But he forces himself to move as though he doesn't. 

Enjolras's bedroom is less pristine than the rest of the house. There's a bit more clutter here, a bit more sign that the place is actually lived in, with a pair of socks left draped across the foot of the bed, and a book left face-down on the end table beside the bed. The curtains in the room are drawn as they haven't been throughout the rest of the house, and that makes Grantaire hope that his pelt might be hidden away somewhere in this room after all.

He checks the bed first, to get it over with, though Enjolras cares enough about the seals and the poaching of their pelts that Grantaire suspects he'd never be so careless with it. There's nothing beneath the blankets, when Grantaire lifts them up, and nothing beneath the mattress but the dusty cover of the box spring.

Grantaire fears, and half-expects, that he'll find his pelt locked up somewhere, kept safe with lock and key, and he'll either have to try to claw his way into whatever houses it, or be forced to leave without it once again. But when he finally comes across it, it's so simple it shocks him. He's sitting on the floor of Enjolras's room, just outside his closet, pulling boxes onto his lap and rifling through them just long enough to be sure that they don't contain his pelt. And then he opens one, a low, flat box, and there it is. There are a few papers on top, things that, at a quick glance, seem to be documentation of what Enjolras and the Amis have discovered so far. And beneath it, folded up with care and attention, is his pelt, its fur rich and gleaming in the low light. Grantaire reaches for it, half-afraid he's dreaming, and shudders as his fingers glide over the soft fur. 

"Fuck," he breathes. _"Fuck."_ And he means to be gentle with it, he really does, just in case it's already begun to degrade, but he can't help it. The brush of his fingers turns into a desperate grasp, fingers buried deep in the fur, hauling it out of the box and dragging it up to clutch against his chest. It spills across his lap, warm and comfortable and so, so familiar. It feels like coming home, even before he's had the chance to throw it around his shoulders and slip back into the sea.

He runs every inch of it through his fingers, checking for places where it might have begun to degrade, braced for the worst. But it's whole and undamaged. Magic still sings through it, sparking against his fingertips, calling him home.

He forces himself to breathe, forces himself to move, before Enjolras comes home to find him still sitting there on his bedroom floor being overcome by his pelt. He puts the papers neatly back inside the box, closes it up and puts the box back where he'd found it.

The house is a mess, torn apart in Grantaire's search for the pelt. He looks around at it all and feels an absurd urge to set things to rights before he leaves -- but that's ridiculous, of course, it's not as though he has any chance of being able to hide the theft, not with the damage he wrought on the front door. He needs to _leave_ , not linger to tidy things up just so Enjolras won't be alarmed when he gets home. He'll be alarmed anyway, there's no preventing that now.

Grantaire bundles his pelt up into a tidy little package, then rises and tucks it beneath his arm and heads out the front door. He needs to get back to Éponine's. He needs to get away from here, before Enjolras comes home to find him red-handed--

He's barely stepped down off the porch when the familiar rumble of Enjolras's car reaches him. He has only a moment to swear, to look around wildly for anything he can take cover behind, and then Enjolras's car has come over the hill and it's too late because he sees him, of course he sees him, his head tipped to the side and his brows furrowed with obvious confusion at the sight of Grantaire standing in front of his home where Enjolras would have no reason to expect him to be.

Grantaire sinks down onto the porch steps, buries his head in his hands, and hates the world.

It's just a moment until Enjolras has pulled his car into the driveway and killed the engine, leaving them in a silence that seems to wrap around them both and choke off Grantaire's throat.

"What are you doing here?" Enjolras asks as he climbs out of the car, and he sounds pleasant enough but that's going to change. He approaches Grantaire, and the porch, and Grantaire lifts his head enough that he can see the moment when it happens -- Enjolras's gaze slides past him, fixes on the door, turns from confusion to shock and anger in the space of a single breath. "What--"

"I should explain," Grantaire says feebly. He's going to have to tell the truth. He's going to have to trust Enjolras with the truth about the selkies and pray that he doesn't laugh himself sick, or call him mad, or a liar. And that he'll understand, and he'll let Grantaire keep his pelt, and all that is seeming less and less likely by the second, as fury transforms Enjolras's face from the open, welcoming expression he'd arrived with into something hard and sharp-edged.

"What happened?" He takes the steps up the porch two-at-a-time and reaches for his door, but hesitates with his hand just above the shattered fragments of wood. When he spins back, his eyes are burning. "Are you all right?"

"I-- What?"

"Someone broke in." He comes back to Grantaire, descends the steps and sits beside Grantaire on them. "Did you just get here? Christ. I'd hate to think what might have happened if you'd showed up while they were still here."

 _Someone_ , Enjolras said, and Grantaire doesn't know whether to laugh or bury his face in his hands and cry. Perhaps both. He stares at Enjolras and he knows that he should tell the truth, that he should end this ridiculous charade. But he also knows that Enjolras is staring at him like he's concerned, not like he hates him, and Grantaire knows that he won't. He swallows down the thickness choking his throat and tries to speak. "I-- I think I scared them off, when I got here. I saw someone running down the street, but I didn't think anything of it until I got closer and saw the door."

"What are you even doing here?" Enjolras's tone is wondering, but not accusing. Grantaire feels wretched. "I finally got out from underneath all that sand and you were gone and I--"

"I had to go." Grantaire presses the heels of his hands against his forehead. Every lie threatens to choke him. He hates this. When did he start getting so soft? "And I-- You said not to let any of the others get a hold of your wallet, so I thought I'd leave it here for you and--" He pulls it out of his pocket and hands it over. Enjolras takes it quietly and then just leaves it lying on his lap, watching Grantaire. "And then I saw the door and--"

He knows what he has to do, and it's going to be the hardest thing he's ever done in his life. Enjolras is still watching him closely, his gaze still soft and sympathetic, but it's only a matter of time until his attention wanders and he notices the bundle of fur sitting on the step beside Grantaire. Grantaire takes a breath, and grits his teeth, and he grabs a handful of the pelt and holds it out to Enjolras. "They were after this, I imagine. It was lying out. They must have left it when I scared them off." Every word feels like a knife, flaying him open.

Enjolras takes a swift breath, his eyes going wide. He reaches out, takes the pelt from Grantaire, and Grantaire lets him. And then he leans his head back into his hands and fights just to breathe.

It's for the best, he tells himself. At least now his pelt is safe. He gave it up from his own hand, willingly, and so now there's no risk it'll degrade. He's bought himself a bit more time, at least, until he can figure out how to get it back in his possession for good.

"Thank you," Enjolras says, almost reverently, almost like he knows what Grantaire is giving up, and what it costs him to do so. He takes the pelt and gets to his feet, then holds a hand down for Grantaire. "Come on. Let's go inspect the damage."

Grantaire lets Enjolras help him up, and lets him lead Grantaire into the house, but he can't muster the energy needed to perpetuate the lie. He keeps his mouth shut and follows a half-step behind Enjolras as he makes his way through the mess that Grantaire left for him.

"Christ, it's been _ransacked_ ," he breathes, and runs a hand over his brow as he looks it all over. And Grantaire has to look away for the weight of guilt that presses in on him, making his chest ache.

Enjolras makes his way through the house methodically, taking careful note of what's been disturbed and looking for anything that might be missing. When he gets to the bedroom, he makes a low, wounded noise at the mess that Grantaire has left scattered about, and he moves straight to the closet and the low, flat box that had held the pelt.

He kneels in the middle of the floor and eases the lid off. When it comes away, revealing the papers Grantaire left inside, air bursts from his lungs like an explosion. "God. Thank god." He reaches in and pulls the pages out. "But... Jesus. If this was the Thenardiers, if they're trying to cover up what they've done, why take the pelt but leave all our research?"

Grantaire sinks down onto his heels beside Enjolras. "The pelt is the only real evidence we have. Maybe they figured that without it, we didn't have anything to stand on."

"Maybe," Enjolras says reluctantly, but shakes his head. He sighs, at length, and closes the box back up. "Come on. Come with me. I need to call the police, but I can't be in here right now."

Grantaire follows him through the house, back out to the porch, where Enjolras leans against the rail and pulls out his phone. "The police?" he asks quietly as Enjolras dials. "There wasn't even anything taken."

"Doesn't matter. It's still illegal." He pins the phone against his ear as the tinny sound of the line ringing drifts across the space between them. "And we need this to be on record, for when we finally have enough to make our move. It's all evidence."

Someone answers and Enjolras spends a few minutes on the line, reporting the break-in and giving the police the details they request. When he finally hangs up, he gives a long sigh and leans his head back against the post, letting his eyes slide shut. He looks impossibly weary, and Grantaire did that to him. "They're sending someone," he says without opening his eyes. "Eventually. Could be some time. A failed robbery discovered after-the-fact isn't the most pressing call around, I imagine." He opens his eyes, then, and looks at Grantaire. It's all Grantaire can do not to twist beneath the weight of his regard. "Do you need to get home? Éponine will be wondering what you're up to, I imagine."

It's true, but Grantaire shakes his head. He did this, the least he can do is see it through. "Can I use your phone, to let her know where I am?"

Enjolras nods and hands it over without comment.

He sends Éponine a quick text, that says only, _I'm at Enjolras's for a while. There's no need to worry._ He holds on to the phone for a moment, until she replies.

_Why would I be worried? What did you do?_

He scowls, his face flushing, and quickly deletes the conversation before handing the phone back to Enjolras with a gruff, "Thanks."

Enjolras gives him a wan smile, and though there's nothing to do but wait for the arrival of the police, he makes no move toward the house. Eventually, Grantaire moves to settle on the porch stairs again. Enjolras gives a sharp sound like relief and sinks down beside him.

"I owe you my gratitude," he says quietly, after a few strained moments have passed between them.

Grantaire chokes out sharp, bitter laughter. "Oh god, don't. Don't thank me."

Enjolras watches him sidelong, his lifted brows asking a question it takes Grantaire too long to understand. And then he's left scrambling for an answer, for a reason he would feel undeserving of Enjolras's thanks that isn't the truth. "I didn't stop him," he says after too long. "I didn't do any good at all."

"Are you crazy? You saved the pelt. We don't have a case at all without that. You saved this whole project."

Grantaire just closes his eyes and shakes his head. Mercifully, Enjolras doesn't press the issue, he just settles back into silence again, gazing out across the street as the sky begins its slow shift toward the brilliance of sunset. "Did you enjoy yourself today?"

"Yes," Grantaire says, the answer startled out of him too quick to think about, and then he blinks in surprise.

Enjolras smiles like the excursion to the beach had been his idea from the start. "Good. I think you needed it as much as any of us."

"I really didn't."

It just makes Enjolras's smile spread. "I think it was good for you, all the same."

"And you?"

His smile slips from smug toward chagrined. "I'll be digging sand out of my ears for a week, at least, but I imagine for me as well. Courfeyrac will certainly say so."

"I didn't ask Courfeyrac."

He laughs quietly. Some of the tension eases out of his shoulders, leaving him sitting more easily, more comfortably. "I won't ever admit to it, if you tell the others, but I imagine it was. It was good to spend a day out in the sun, and to see them all enjoying themselves."

Grantaire wants to ask if he enjoyed himself, but that seems like pressing his luck.

They sit together, talking quietly, until the police at last show up. Grantaire hangs back while Enjolras gives his statement, running through everything again, but when he mentions that Grantaire was already here when he arrived home, that he was the one to see and stop the intruder, the officer's attention turns to Grantaire and he wants nothing more than to run away.

He's used to lying. It's a fact of life and a means of survival, for the selkies. But this feels different somehow, feels like deception instead of just self-preservation, and it's all he can do not to give himself away as he tells his lie to the police officer.

"We'll call you if we turn anything up," the officer says as farewell, before he climbs back into his cruiser, and Enjolras makes a face at his back.

"I'm pretty sure that's cop-speak for 'you're probably never going to hear from me again.'"

Grantaire gives him a sharp glance. "You don't think they're going to find anything." He doesn't make it a question, because that much is obvious by Enjolras's bitter tone and the dejected slump of his shoulders. And he tries not to be relieved by that, because if the police _do_ find evidence of an intruder, the only person it's going to point to is Grantaire, and that's just going to lead to questions that he can't answer.

Enjolras lifts one shoulder and stares out at the retreating police car with an expression that seems out-of-place on his face. Grantaire may not have known him long, but in all the time that he has, Enjolras has seemed to burn bright with conviction. Now he looks cynical and world-weary and it feels wrong. Something unpleasant twists through Grantaire's chest at the sight of it, and brings him forward to steps to Enjolras's side.

Enjolras sighs and scrubs a hand across his forehead. "It's a failed robbery. Nothing was stolen, nothing was damaged beyond the front door. I'm sure they'll look into it, but I'm also sure they've got higher priority cases. This one's just going to end up pushed to the bottom of the pile, again and again, until it's gone too cold to find anything." He seems to recall himself, and come back to himself, his back straightening as he brushes that off with a shake of his head and a quick sweep of his hand. "In any case, it doesn't matter. We know who's responsible for it, and this isn't the worst of their crimes. We'd do better to focus on the poaching, and get them for that. This is just further evidence we can use to make our case and prove what they're up to. Why would they try to steal the pelt if not to cover their tracks?"

"I can't imagine," Grantaire murmurs, unable to look at him.

"Thank you for staying. I needed the company." Enjolras's hand lands on his shoulder and gives it a brief squeeze. "I imagine you'll be wanting to get home soon, though."

He should. But his thoughts linger and catch on the mess he left inside Enjolras's home, still in need of cleaning up, and he can't bring himself to leave it all to Enjolras. He may not be able to admit the truth, but at least he can help to pick up the pieces he left behind. "I can stay. Do you want help straightening things up inside?"

Enjolras's smile is answer enough, slow and surprised and pleased. So Grantaire moves inside with him, careful to keep his gaze averted from the shattered wood of the front door, though his chest feels heavy with guilt all the same.

He takes the kitchen, and tries to pretend that he doesn't know where everything belongs because he's the one who pulled it out of place to begin with. Enjolras works in the living room, and the silence is easier than it was before, and broken by occasional conversation. Slowly the house starts to look more like a home, less like someplace a tornado tore through.

When the common areas are done, they move together to work on the bedroom. Grantaire sits on the floor, shuffling through the papers that he'd pulled out and left disarrayed, handing things off to Enjolras when they're things better left for him to organize.

Their hands graze one another as they pass papers and boxes back and forth, and after it's happened twice, the third time Enjolras hesitates, and lingers with his gaze on Grantaire. 

Grantaire flushes, unsure what it means or what he did to provoke it. He pushes the stack of old receipts into Enjolras's hands and starts to withdraw.

"Can I--" Enjolras starts, and then lets his breath out on a rush.

Grantaire waits, stiff, but he doesn't continue. Grantaire glances up at him at length, frowning. "What?"

"There's something I've been wanting to do." Enjolras sets the receipts aside, puts them right back on the floor where Grantaire just took them from. Grantaire's frown deepens.

"Another fun day?"

The corner of Enjolras's mouth kicks up. "No. Though Courfeyrac would undoubtedly say it's good for me, too."

"What--" Grantaire starts, and Enjolras leans in.

He isn't rushed about it, he moves in slowly, one hand planted in the carpet by Grantaire's hip, the distance between them slowly shrinking. Grantaire freezes, his heart battering against his ribcage, his breath coming fast and sharp. He's stuck in place, frozen like a spooked animal.

When he's very close, Enjolras glances up at him. There's a question in his gaze that Grantaire can't interpret, much less answer. But Enjolras looks into his eyes for a moment then gives the tiniest of nods, as though he's found his answer all the same. He brings a hand up to curve around the back of Grantaire's neck, to hold him steady when he startles, and then he closes the rest of the distance between them and presses his mouth to Grantaire's.

Grantaire is frozen, petrified. His heart is like a jackhammer against the inside of his chest. His lungs ache, but he can't remember how to breathe. Enjolras's lips are warm on his, his breath warm where it grazes against his cheek, his fingers warm where they press into the back of his neck.

A moment passes, an endless, exquisite agony, and then Enjolras eases back, and takes all that warmth with him. There's a frown pinched between his brows. "Did I misread--"

Grantaire throws himself forward, grabbing on to the front of Enjolras's shirt and pressing their mouths together again, chasing that heat. Enjolras gives an unsteady sigh into the kiss, and strokes a hand through Grantaire's hair like that's going to soothe him, and grazes his tongue out across the seam of Grantaire's lips.

Grantaire's breath leaves him all on a rush. He doesn't make a conscious decision to invite more, but the breath parts his lips and Enjolras seizes the moment, fingers pressing tight against Grantaire's neck and mouth pressing firm against Grantaire's. He slips inside, his tongue slick and eager and Grantaire is drowning.

He brings his hands up to either side of Enjolras's face and holds on to him, feeling as though the entire weight of the sea has crashed over his head, leaving him reeling and breathless. He's kissed before, has been kissed before, but passion is a simpler thing out amongst his own kind, as easily sated as any other hunger. This, though. This feels like a need that's going to consume him whole. It's overwhelming and it's not exactly what Grantaire would call pleasant, and he practically climbs into Enjolras's lap as he presses in close in pursuit of something that will sate it.

Enjolras tips back abruptly, giving a sharp sound of surprise, and then a grunt when his shoulder comes up against the wall. Grantaire would worry he'd hurt him, but his smile curves against Grantaire's mouth and his hands hold him securely. The shudder of his breath between them feels like the first breath of air after a half-hour dive, and it feels so good and so sweet that Grantaire jerks back and stares at him. His hands still hold Enjolras's face between them, and they're unsteady as Grantaire fights to remember what it is to breathe on his own.

Enjolras blinks at him and slowly smiles. Grantaire wishes he'd say something, but he seems content to smile at him in silence, so Grantaire supposes the burden of conversation falls to him.

He's still pretty much in Enjolras's lap. Heat washes across his face as he extricates himself, sliding back across the carpet until they're no longer touching, and he can sit with a few inches of carpet between them. "I should go," he says, staring down at his knees. He can't bear to look at Enjolras.

"You don't have to."

"I should." He rubs a hand over his face. His lungs still aren't working steadily. "Éponine will worry."

She won't, she made that clear enough. And the whole point of calling her was so that she wouldn't, but Enjolras is kind enough not to bring that up.

He does look like he wants to say something, though. Grantaire braces for it, but all Enjolras does is nod and say, "I wouldn't want you to worry her. Thank you for staying, and for helping."

And that's more than Grantaire can bear, because he didn't help, he just made everything worse. He's the reason Enjolras is sitting in the middle of his bedroom floor looking haggard and worn, and so he does what every selkie does when faced with something that's too overwhelming to be faced head-on. 

He flees.

Éponine is home when he gets there, cooking something that ought to smell delicious, but the thought of food just turns Grantaire's stomach. She glances over her shoulder at him when he bursts through the door, then takes a second look and abruptly turns away from the stove and comes to him. "What's happened?"

Grantaire sinks down onto the couch and buries his head in his hands. He takes a few moments just to breathe, ragged and unsteady, and then he says, "I kissed him." It's muffled against his hands, but this is Éponine, so of course she understands it anyway.

She takes a swift breath and drops down beside him. "Why would you do that?"

"He kissed me first. And I liked it and I wasn't thinking and— oh god."

Éponine is too quiet for much too long. "I told you," she says at last, and it's somehow both sad and admonishing at once. "I told you this was going to happen, didn't I? I said that you can't live amongst the humans without being transformed by them, that they're going to take you in and reshape you and make you into something other than what you are. I _warned_ you, Grantaire."

"I know," he snarls, the desperate lashing-out of a cornered animal. 

Éponine stares at him a moment, then sighs heavily. She leans back against the couch and pulls him in to her. "I'm sorry," she says, and sounds like she means it.

Grantaire lets her pull him in, lets her press his face to her shoulder and wrap him in her arms. He shudders against her, and when he can bring himself to move, he slides his arms around and clings to her.

"Do you love him yet?"

"No. _No._ " His reaction is violent, and surprises even himself. "I just want him."

She just sighs again and strokes a hand over his hair. "Be careful with your heart, Grantaire. It's easily lost, and not so easily retrieved as a misplaced pelt."

He doesn't love Enjolras. He _doesn't_. It's just desire. 

Isn't that bad enough?


	11. Chapter 11

They all meet again the next evening, and the Musain is abuzz with the hum of excited conversation as soon as Grantaire steps inside with Éponine. He doesn't have to guess why. As soon as they reach the cluster of tables in the back that Les Amis have claimed for their own, it's all anyone is talking about — the break-in at Enjolras's house, and the attempted theft. It makes Grantaire want to squirm out of his skin and run far away, but he keeps his hand tight on Éponine's arm and keeps himself moving forward, and he makes himself smile when Joly and Bossuet wave him over to their table.

"Did you really fight off the intruder single-handedly?" Joly demands eagerly, and looks him over like he's searching for injuries or evidence to prove the claim.

Grantaire shakes his head as he settles into the empty chair. He'd look to Éponine to save him, but she's moved away a little bit, her head bowed as she exchanges words with Combeferre. "I just surprised him, and he ran off." He hates being forced to perpetuate the lie. He should have just taken his pelt and run, and to hell with what Enjolras would have thought. It would have been easier than this, everyone staring at him like he's a hero when he knows it's just the opposite that's true.

"You saved the pelt," Enjolras says from the front, loud enough for everyone to hear. Grantaire flinches and can't quite bring himself to meet Enjolras's gaze. "We have nothing without that."

Grantaire tries to wave it off, to move them to some other topic that isn't going to make him want to sink into the floor with mortification and guilt, but all anyone wants to talk about is how brave he is, or how impressed they are. For the first time, he understands the human craving for alcohol. He wishes he could drown himself in buckets of it. Maybe then he'd be able to face these accolades without each one twisting the knife of guilt a little tighter inside him.

Eventually, everyone settles down enough for the meeting to come to order properly. It's a greater relief than Grantaire even expected. It seems like every word out of Enjolras's mouth is either praise of Grantaire or theorizing who might have broken into his home, and that does little to alleviate his discomfort. But at least now, with Enjolras standing at the head of all of them and his words carrying out across their tables, everyone's attention is focused on him, and Grantaire can at last breathe without the weight of all their questions pressing him down.

He comes alert when Enjolras gestures Courfeyrac up to the front and he says, with a crooked little grin, "All right, guys, try to contain yourselves, but I think I might have found an address for the Thenardiers."

A murmur goes through the group, but Grantaire sits bolt upright, feeling as though he's been kicked hard enough in the chest to knock the wind from him. They live on the other side of town, Courfeyrac says, or at least all the evidence he's been able to find seems to suggest that they do, and now that they've got a location, they're one step closer to finding the last pieces of evidence that they need to make their case so they can present it to the police.

"What are you thinking?" Combeferre asks, and the others nod because it's obvious to all, obvious even to Grantaire, that Enjolras is working his way up to a plan.

Enjolras drums his fingers against the tabletop, a considering look transforming his face. "The evidence we really need is in that house," he says at length. "We need to get in there and see what's going on."

"Another break-in?" Combeferre wonders, his brow furrowed. "We're only going to hurt our cause if we get ourselves arrested for B&E, you know."

Enjolras shakes his head. "Not a break-in. If they're selling these pelts, they have to be selling them to somebody, right? We'll pose as buyers and ask them to show us what's for sale, we'll bring recorders so we have the entire conversation on tape. The police department won't be able to ignore us then, if we have an actual recording of their admission of guilt."

"A sting!" Courfeyrac cries, clasping his hands together. He looks delighted. "Oh, this is going to be fun. Do we all get to go?"

Enjolras shakes his head with a bemused look. "I think we'd overwhelm them, if we all showed up on their doorstep. Two of us, I think, inside the actual house, the others can help with canvassing the neighbors, asking for testimonials. We're bound to have more luck with it, now that we know where to focus our search."

"Who are you taking?" Jehan asks, because of course there isn't any question that Enjolras will be one of the two inside the house.

Grantaire is slipping. If he were at his best, he would have realized what was coming from the start. Instead, it's a shock when Enjolras lifts his head and meets his gaze across the crowded tables. Realization knocks all the air from his lungs, leaves him sitting there staring at Enjolras like an idiot.

"Well?" Enjolras asks softly, the corner of his mouth kicking up. "It seems only right. You're kind of the hero of the group today. What do you say? Do you want to come with me?"

It would be so much easier if Enjolras had just handed it down as a declaration, that Grantaire was who he would be going with and there was no room for debate left on the matter. It's worse like this, giving him an option, making him agree. With Enjolras's gaze holding on his, warm and steady and still smiling faintly, it feels like they're much closer than the twenty feet that separate them, and it's impossible for Grantaire to remember why he ought to refuse.

He nods, a stream of oaths filling his head even as he does so, but he can't give any other answer with Enjolras looking at him like that, like it's just the two of them and the sea of tables and Amis between them don't exist. "Sure," he says when he can make his voice work, though it comes out as a croak.

Éponine's twisted around with the others to look at him and wait for his response, but the look she gives him isn't just disapproving, it's a warning. And he knows, he _knows_ that everything she's ever told him about the things being on land and amongst humans will do to him is true, he still has the memory of Enjolras's mouth on his as proof of that, but he feels as though he's pulled along by a tide he can't see and there's little he can do to escape its grasp.

Her look darkens when he gives his answer, though everyone else seems unsurprised. Enjolras himself seems perhaps a little surprised, his brows lifting a little and his smile widening and taking on an edge of unexpected relief. And Grantaire supposes he can't fault him that, considering the way Grantaire ran out on him.

"Good," Enjolras says, like that's all the deciding they need. "We'll make arrangements to meet with them, then. Éponine, you have a history with them, could you arrange an introduction?"

Éponine swivels her head around to stare at him. Her back's to Grantaire, hiding her expression, but he doesn't need to see it to be able to read the tension that rolls down her back and across her shoulders, or the way she holds herself perfectly, impossibly still. "No," she says at last like it's an insane question, because it is.

Enjolras's brows furrow. "It's just an introduction, surely they'll be willing to—"

"They'll never believe it, not from me. We parted on bad terms. They'll be suspicious the minute I show up in front of them, and they'll be suspicious of you by association." Grantaire hears all the other reasons that she's left unsaid. _They stole my pelt. They deceived and betrayed me. They'll never, ever believe that a selkie would betray her own kind by making herself complicit in their business._ "I'm sorry, but you'd be better off to walk up to them as strangers than to come with my introduction."

Grantaire half expects a fight, or that they'll push the issue, but Enjolras just hums thoughtfully and nods. "All right, we'll figure something else out, then. Thank you all the same." His gaze meets Grantaire's and he gives a little tip of his head. "Grantaire, will you come up here so we can start making a plan? The rest of you can find partners for canvassing and decide how to divvy the area up between yourselves."

There's a general murmur of conversation and the scraping of chairs across the floor as people rise and move around, seeking out their preferred partners. Grantaire rises, too, and goes up to Enjolras's table, feeling as though he's swimming through molasses the entire way. Every step feels slow and hindered, the distance spooling out between them so that it seems like he'll never cross it, until abruptly he's standing right next to Enjolras and left winded from the suddenness of their proximity.

Enjolras smiles and kicks the chair beside him out for Grantaire to take. "What do you think? Are they likely to give us the time of day if we try to approach them without someone they're comfortable with acting as a go-between?"

Grantaire shrugs and shakes his head, mystified as to why Enjolras would think he has any answers at all. "I don't know them. I couldn't say. If they're trafficking in illegal goods, though, I imagine they're more likely to be cautious than not."

Enjolras nods, humming a sound of agreement as his eyes narrow in thought. "Montparnasse? We've more than enough evidence of his involvement to try to persuade him. The only solid evidence we have points to him — do you think he'd give us an introduction, for the sake of giving us someone else to lay blame on?"

"Perhaps?" Grantaire shakes his head again. He doesn't know Montparnasse any better than the Thenardiers. "If he won't, though, we risk tipping our hand and giving them the chance to slip away before we've gathered the proof we need."

Enjolras steeples his fingers in front of his mouth, looking sharp-eyed and eager. "There's always a chance, but I think there are steps we can take to minimize the risk."

"You aren't going to make me part of this, are you?" Grantaire asks, sidling back and eyeing Enjolras uncertainly. "Convincing him? I'm not exactly the intimidating sort."

Something about that makes the corners of Enjolras's eyes crinkle and makes him laugh beneath his breath, but after a moment he recovers and shakes his head, still smiling at Grantaire like he's done something delightful. "No, not if you don't want to. I was thinking Bahorel. He's got the intimidating look about him. And Combeferre, maybe, he can drown a person in lawyer-speak so thoroughly it'd terrify anyone."

Combeferre is sitting close by, as he always does, though not at Enjolras's table like usual. He glances up at the sound of his name, a quick flash of motion on the edges of Grantaire's vision. "We're making plans for canvassing," he says with a tip of his head, and it's only then that Grantaire turns enough to realize that Éponine is sitting beside him. She frowns when Grantaire's questioning gaze lands on her, and fidgets like maybe she wants to escape but can't quite make herself leave. "But if we can work around that, sure, I'll help you put the fear of God and the judicial system into him."

Enjolras nods his agreement and turns his attention back to Grantaire, though Grantaire is still caught by the way that Éponine is looking caught-out and defiant. "There," Enjolras says, and it's an effort for Grantaire to drag his gaze back to him. Enjolras is smiling. "I think we can manage just the three of us, if you'd rather not join in." The smile turns softer, turns a little private, so that Grantaire is seized by the urge to shift uncomfortably and glance around to see who else might be witness to it. "You're welcome, though, if you would like to join us. I think you have the ability to be much more intimidating than you think."

Grantaire shakes his head, and Enjolras lets the topic of conversation move to other things. There's a constant sense of activity around his table, as people drift by to have a word, and then wander off only to be replaced by others coming up to say something to Enjolras. Grantaire sits there in the middle of it all, feeing painfully awkward about his continued presence there, but he can't figure out how to excuse himself. And Éponine's deep in conversation with Combeferre, and Joly and Bossuet are sitting close together on either side of a girl Grantaire has seen at meetings a time or two before but never been properly introduced to, so there seems little excuse to extricate himself here, when there's no one to go off and seek refuge with instead.

The meeting draws to a close as evening wears on, and Grantaire pays little attention to what else might be said during the rest of it. Leaving seems like an excellent excuse, so he slides away from Enjolras's table and makes toward Éponine, but he nears her just in time to hear Combeferre ask her if he might walk her home, his cheeks burning a sudden shade of red and his eyes hopeful. Grantaire hesitates, close enough to overhear but not to intrude, and when Éponine answers with a hesitant affirmative, Grantaire turns about and leaves them both to it.

The Musain hs cleared out quickly, with the meeting officially called to an end. Joly and Bossuet are making their way to the door with the same woman tucked between them, both their arms wrapped around her waist as she throws her head back and laughs at something one has said. Cosette's ordering a coffee to-go at the front and Marius is hovering by her side, but it's mostly just Grantaire and Enjolras left back among their cluster of now-abandoned tables. Enjolras is working to push them back into their usual arrangement, so Grantaire helps him, because it seems like it would be the height of rudeness to walk out and leave him to it without a word.

When they've finished setting the tables to rights, Enjolras shakes the hair back off his brow and turns to face Grantaire. He isn't smiling now, not like before. His look is serious and considering and it rests on Grantaire's face a moment too long before he tips his head toward the Musain's door and says, "Do you want to walk with me?"

Grantaire stares at him, his voice gone thick in his throat. "Why?"

And there's a glimpse of Enjolras's smile, a hint of it in the way the corner of his mouth twitches. "Because we're both going the same direction? I can hang back a few minutes so we can walk separately if you'd prefer, but it seems a little pointless."

Grantaire frowns and shakes his head. "You don't have to do that."

"Good." Enjolras nods once, decisive, and starts for the door, leaving Grantaire with little choice but to keep up.

Enjolras is silent, contemplative, for the first few blocks. Grantaire walks at his side, grateful for the quiet. It seems inevitable that Enjolras will break it eventually, certainly sooner than Grantaire would like.

Enjolras clears his throat as they leave the last of downtown behind them, and proves Grantaire correct. "I'd like to ask you something, if that's all right."

Grantaire stares at the sidewalk as it glides by beneath their feet. Their paces are perfectly matched, even if their strides aren't, striking a counter-rhythm to each other. "About last night."

Enjolras is quiet again for the space of a breath. Grantaire wonders if he's startled him. "Yes. You can say no."

Grantaire almost laughs. Since when has he ever been able to say no to Enjolras? When has anyone? Enjolras's entire personality is like an ocean squall, fierce and violent, throwing everyone in its path wherever it wishes, and the only thing to be done about it is to hunker down and wait to see where you'll end up. "You can ask."

He wonders if Enjolras will notice that he never promised to answer.

Enjolras stops without warning. Grantaire does as well, two paces on, and waits a moment to see if he'll catch up before he sighs and turns back. Enjolras's gaze is steady on him, searching. The smile's vanished again, nothing to betray what he's thinking but a pinched furrow between his brows and solemn downturn to the corners of his mouth. "Are we okay?"

Grantaire passes a hand over his face. When had they become a _we_? And how had he not noticed it coming into existence? "Yes."

Enjolras looks like he's waiting for more. When it doesn't come, he forges ahead. "Because you left abruptly last night, and I know you didn't want to worry Éponine, but—"

"You didn't do anything I didn't want." He doesn't know how to explain that it's the wanting itself that confuses him so. He wishes he could lie. It's never been a hardship to do so before, to keep the selkies secret and safe, but these lies in particular feel like fishing lines, their hooks sunk so deep that he can't force them out no matter how he tries. All that comes up is the truth.

Enjolras looks surprised, then pleased. "Is it something I can do again?"

"Probably," Grantaire sighs, because that's the truth too. He let Enjolras kiss him the once, and he doesn't see any reason to expect that, if he does so again, Grantaire would be any more successful at resisting him.

He doesn't expect Enjolras to put his prediction to quite so immediate a test, but he slides up right there on the side of the street and steals Grantaire's space until it feels like it's always belonged to him.

Grantaire's breath curls thick in his throat. His chest squeezes tight, but he can't look away from Enjolras, from the serious, intent look on his face as he slides a hand against Grantaire's neck and leans in. 

He seems hesitant, but Grantaire doesn't believe that Enjolras is capable of being uncertain about anything. He's waiting, Grantaire realizes. Giving him an opportunity to speak up, if this isn't okay after all.

There are a thousand reasons that Grantaire should do just that, chief amongst them Éponine's admonition that getting too close to humans will change him no matter how hard he fights against it, but they all fade away to distant chatter as Enjolras leans in and his breath skates across Grantaire's mouth, warm and carrying the faint bitterness of coffee from the Musain.

Grantaire leans in, closing the last of the distance between them, and swallows down the shaky exhale that Enjolras gives. He moves without thought, pressing in, one hand wrapping hard around Enjolras's waist as the other climbs up to find purchase in his hair. 

They're in the middle of town, obvious where they stand on the side of the street, and Grantaire doesn't care as Enjolras grazes a tongue across his lip and then retreats, as though waiting to see how Grantaire responds to the caress.

Grantaire groans, quiet and strangled in his throat. Enjolras breaks away to lean his forehead against Grantaire's, breathing hard though they've been standing still. "Is this going to make you run away again?"

Grantaire can't lie about this any easier than he could earlier. "It's possible."

That just makes Enjolras's lips thin. It isn't an angry look, it's a _determined_ one.

Grantaire is doomed.

Enjolras doesn't kiss him again, though. He slides his hand down Grantaire's arm to cup his hand around his elbow, then uses it to guide him forward, continuing down the street towards home. "I'll stop if you ask me to."

Grantaire's lips pull into a smile, but there isn't much mirth behind it. "I know. You don't have to remind me. I won't forget."

Enjolras nods once, like that's enough, and they finish their walk in a silence that's completely different from the one they started it in.


	12. Chapter 12

A few days later, Grantaire is trying not to overcook an omelet when Éponine comes out of her room. She's not staggering out sleepy-eyed and in her pajamas like he's grown accustomed to from her, but fully dressed and with her hair brushed, and when she stops in the entryway to put her shoes on, Grantaire abandons the kitchen to come and stare at her. "You're going somewhere?"

She makes a face and tugs at the tongue of her sneakers. "Canvassing. It's our turn today, or so I've been told. Better to get it over with before it gets hot, I figured."

His eggs are sizzling and she warned him against walking away from a hot pan, but none of that is as important as this. He can dump the omelet and start over, if it's overcooked. "You and Combeferre."

The sigh she gives is sharp and irritated. She punctuates it with a quick jerk on her shoe's laces. "Don't look at me like that."

"I'm not looking at you any special way."

"You were there, you saw what it was like. Everyone was pairing up and I couldn't very well refuse to join, not if either of us wanted to be invited back." She straightens and fixes him with a look. "Or did you agree to go with Enjolras because you're just dying to go spy on the people I used to work for?"

He doesn't say anything. After a moment, she takes it for the concession it is and gives a decisive nod. "Don't go reading more into this than you should. I'm going under duress."

He's not stupid enough to say another word about it. But he watches her get ready to leave from the corner of his eye as he returns to the kitchen and his overdone eggs, and he can't help but think that he's never known Éponine to let herself be forced into anything in her whole life.

*

Éponine still hasn't returned and Grantaire has worked through most of a carton of eggs and finally managed to make an omelet that isn't browned on the outside or runny on the inside when the landline rings.

He frowns and considers ignoring it, but Éponine's out running around and he can't stop the worry that she might have run into trouble, out there so close to the people who have treated her so poorly.

He answers it, pinning the phone against his ear with his shoulder as he slides the omelet out of the pan and onto a plate. "Yes? Hello?"

There's a moment of silence, just the crackle of static across the line, and then a voice that he can almost recognize going, "Grantaire? Is that you?"

"Well, it's not Éponine." He cuts off a bite of omelet with a fork and tastes it. It's the best of any he's made this morning, but Éponine's are still better, and it makes his frown deepen. "I don't know who else you would be expecting."

"I guess that's fair enough. Are you busy?"

"I'm eating."

"Will you be done in fifteen minutes?"

He sighs down at the disappointing omelet and pushes it around on the plate. "Probably. Where are we going?"

"The Thénardiers." Enjolras's voice is vibrating with excitement, like a plucked piano string. "Bahorel and I spoke with Montparnasse this morning and we've got our introduction. We're going now, while he's still got Bahorel's fists fresh in his mind and is unlikely to back out."

"It sounds like there's a story there." Grantaire cuts off a bigger bite of omelet and shoves it into his mouth, seeking nutrition now rather than flavor.

"I'll tell you when we're on our way. Can you be ready in fifteen?"

"I'll be ready in five."

"Good," Enjolras says and disconnects, leaving him with only static pressing against his eardrums.

Grantaire drops the phone back onto the cradle and finishes his omelet in just a few oversized bites. He leaves his plate in the sink and runs water over it so Éponine won't have to when she returns, leaves a brief note on the kitchen table so she won't worry, and is dressed and waiting in less than the promised five minutes.

The wait for Enjolras to arrive leaves him wishing he'd taken his time a little more. There's nothing to do but sit and count the minutes and try not to go mad as a million thoughts all run through his mind. There's excitement at the opportunity to finally be making tangible progress, and a jitter of nerves and premature fury at the thought of standing in front of the couple who have been responsible for so much of his people's suffering, worry that the Thénardiers will somehow realize that they're not genuinely interested customers or that Montparnasse will tip them off despite the apparent success of Bahorel's intimidation.

It feels like an hour's passed by the time he hears Enjolras's car out front, and the slap of his shoes up the walk before he knocks on the door. Grantaire feels exhausted already, and he's done little more than eat breakfast and wait.

He goes to the door and pulls it open to Enjolras's tense smile. "Ready?"

Grantaire doesn't think he's asking if he's dressed and put shoes on and has he remembered his keys, but either way the answer's the same. He nods and locks the house up tight behind himself.

"Bahorel's with Montparnasse to make sure he doesn't try anything. He's already called the Thénardiers, we're to meet them at their place in half an hour."

"Good," Grantaire says. "Let's go."

*

Grantaire isn't sure what he expects the Thénardiers' home to look like — perhaps a falling-down wreck, like Montparnasse's — but it's neat and tidy and entirely unremarkable.

They answer the door at Enjolras's knock with too-broad smiles that don't reach their eyes. Enjolras gives no indication he's noticed anything amiss, just dips his head in a polite, if brief, greeting and lets himself be invited in. Grantaire has to brush past Mrs. Thénardier as he follows in after, and it makes him bristle.

There's nothing inside their home, either, to suggest that they're stealing and selling selkie pelts on the black market, but then Grantaire supposes that there wouldn't be. If they were that sort of careless, they'd have been caught long ago.

He lets Enjolras take the lead, answering their questions and keeping the conversation turned to the business at hand when Mr. Thénardier seems a bit too keen with his simpering and flattery. He supposes that it must be an aid to business or they wouldn't still be doing it, not when it's so obvious that they don't mean a word of it, but all it does is make Grantaire want to scream and claw at them.

"We'd like to see the product, before we talk any further," Enjolras says, as even and sure as if he does this sort of thing every day, and Grantaire slants him a sidelong look. His smile, when he turns it on the Thénardiers, is thin and sharp. "There's no point talking numbers until we see what we're paying for, now is there?"

"Of course, of course," Mr. Thénardier says, still too overly polite to be at all sincere. "We don't keep them all here, you understand, the damp air this close to the sea is terrible for furs, but we have one we keep on hand that we can show you, so you'll know the quality we'll be providing."

"I understand. And you understand, of course, that we won't be making a deal until we've seen the product."

Mr. Thénardier makes a joke about Enjolras being a shrewd businessman that Grantaire is sure is meant to flatter, but it makes Grantaire want to hurt him. If the way Enjolras's smile goes tight and strained at the corners is any indication, it has the same effect on him, too.

They follow Mr. and Mrs. Thénardier back to a room they call their office, and stand together waiting while they make a fuss over pulling out a box and opening it with a great deal of showmanship. They're standing shoulder to shoulder, just close enough for their skin to brush against each other, and Grantaire's not sure if it's by accident or design, if Enjolras knows that he needs the contact and the reminder that he's not alone, but it's the only thing keeping him from coming out of his skin with an incandescent fury.

Inside the box is something wrapped in paper, and Mrs. Thénardier peels the edges back like she's revealing some incredible treasure rather than just a folded-up pelt. Grantaire supposes that showmanship is good for business, too.

When she lifts the pelt out of the box, holding it up so it unfurls and hangs at its full length, Grantaire gulps down air and grabs on to Enjolras's arm before he's able to control himself. He knows that pelt, oh god, he knows those markings almost as well as he knows his own, they're _Éponine's_ , and his vise grip on Enjolras's arm is the only thing that keeps him steady on his feet.

"You like what you see," Mr. Thénardier says, smirking, not a question. There's a part of Grantaire, the part that belongs to the sea, that's running the odds and considering the likelihood that he could snatch Éponine's pelt out of their hands and run for the door and make it outside and away before they can catch him.

He's so lucky Enjolras is with him, because he's not capable of acting like a functional person right now. Enjolras covers for him smoothly, though, giving that same tight smile that the Thénardiers haven't yet realized means he's furious. "May we look at it a little closer?" He holds his hand out, expectant.

Mrs. Thénardier hands it over. Enjolras takes it and runs a hand over the fur, makes a noncommittal noise and turns to hold it out to Grantaire. "What do you think?" he asks, like they're actually here as partners, like they're really assessing the quality of a purchase they mean to make. Like he hasn't noticed that Grantaire is only half in his right mind right now, though his gaze softens when he's got his shoulder turned toward the Thénardiers and they can't see, searching Grantaire's eyes, asking a question Grantaire doesn't know how to answer. It asks, _Are you okay?_ , but Grantaire doesn't even know what the answer is.

He reaches out and presses his hand against the fur, because the Thénardiers are both watching him and because Enjolras seems to expect it. As his fingers slide deep into the pelt, where the fur is dense and warm, he fights the impulse to gasp again. Power sparks against his fingers like lightning across the sea, an electric sensation that steals his breath. "It isn't degraded at all," he breathes, and instantly knows it's a mistake, but he can't help himself.

Mrs. Thénardier's gaze flashes to him. Instantly, all the [consideration] she's been showing to Enjolras vanishes, leaves her brief and business-like and fully focused on Grantaire. "Sweetheart," she says, without a drop of honey in her voice, and smacks Mr. Thénardier in the arm. "Where are our manners, take him out to the kitchen and see if there's anything they might want to drink, won't you?"

Enjolras protests as Mr. Thénardier tries to lead him off, but Grantaire catches his eye and says, "It's all right. Maybe just a glass of water for me?" He hands the pelt over and leaves then, looking baffled, and as soon as he's gone down the hall, Mrs. Thénardier turns her gaze onto Grantaire.

"You know."

Grantaire runs his hand through the pelt, feeling the magic spark against his fingertips and wanting to laugh and cry and rage all at once. "I know they're not seal furs you're selling," he says quietly, because he knows if he lets his voice raise he won't be able to get control of it until he's screamed himself hoarse. "Not _just_ that, anyway."

Mrs. Thénardier's gaze is avid, and as sharp as a laser when she's got it focused on him. "We've got some degraded ones we sell to those who are just looking for the fur. For coats and the like. The magic's all gone, but the fur's just as nice as any other and they never know the difference." She sidles up close and leers. He supposes it's meant to be a smile, but there's nothing warm or comforting in it at all. "You, though. You know the value of what you're buying, don't you?"

"I know," he says softly. "How much?"

"Well, now." She lifts a shoulder, tries to look coy. "That depends on which one you'll be buying, doesn't it? Some aren't so fine, or their magic's not so strong. Depends on what you want to use it for, I suppose, which one you'll want."

"I want this one." He tightens his fingers on Éponine's pelt.

That makes the façade drop. She rears back and frowns at him. "It's not for sale."

"I want this one."

"We're not selling it. That's our showpiece, you know, and it's not available. We've plenty of others you can take your pick from." She reaches to take the pelt back from him, and Grantaire tightens his grip. He's about half a second from erupting into violence when the sound of Mr. Thénardier's voice in the hall, and Enjolras's beneath it, makes them both go still. Mrs. Thénardier glares, but releases it and puts a stride's length between them just as the two come through the door, each carrying a glass of water.

Enjolras hands his to Grantaire before Mr. Thénardier can, leaving him looking taken aback before he passes his off to Enjolras. Enjolras scans Grantaire's face as he takes up his place beside him, and whatever he sees there makes him linger, and makes the line of a frown form between his brows. "What's wrong?" he asks beneath his breath, too faint for the others to hear.

Grantaire just shakes his head. He couldn't speak, even if Enjolras tried to force him.

Enjolras and Mr. Thénardier try to resume their negotiations, but Mrs. Thénardier seems uninterested in dealing with him now that she knows he's ignorant about the truth of what they're selling. All her comments and questions are addressed to Grantaire, until Mr. Thénardier starts to give her uncertain glances and Enjolras starts to bristle at Grantaire's side.

Maybe, with the other two there with them now, she'll be less inclined to take such a firm stance about the matter. "How much?" he asks again, and lifts the pelt up. "For _this_ one."

She narrows her eyes at him, her mouth pinched tight. At Grantaire's side, Enjolras snaps his head about to frown at him, confused. But Grantaire doesn't relent, keeps his gaze on Mrs. Thénardier while her husband whispers something excitedly in her ear and she looks more and more mutinous with every word.

"Five thousand," she says at last, the number spat out between them like it tastes vile.

It's such a small amount, compared to the value of it, to what it means to Éponine. And it's still more than he has, more than she has, probably more than any of the Amis have. He tightens his fist on the pelt and thinks a second time about running, just running.

Beside him, Enjolras takes a sharp breath, and then lets it out just as quickly. He puts a hand on Grantaire's shoulder, and Grantaire isn't sure whether he's trying to comfort or to restrain, but the warmth and the light weight of it is nice all the same. It helps him feel grounded, just a little.

"We don't carry that kind of cash on us, you understand," Enjolras says, with a disdainful edge to the words that implies, _Not when we're coming to talk to the likes of_ you. "We'll consider the offer, and whether it's worth countering it, and get back to you with our response."

"Of course," Mrs. Thénardier says with a smile so forced it looks painful. She reaches a hand for the pelt and Grantaire nearly bolts right there because he's going to have to _give it back_. He's going to have to go home and see Éponine and he doesn't know how he's ever going to be able to tell her that he had her pelt in his hand and he let it go.

He does it because he has to, because all three are looking at him and waiting for him and there's no choice at all. They'll come back, he tells himself as he extends his arm and Mrs. Thénardier snatches the pelt out of his grasp. They'll come back and they'll counter the offer and they'll find a way to get it. He'll find a way to make the money, or borrow it. He'll go door-to-door through the whole town begging for loose change until he's collected enough, if he has to.

Enjolras says some sort of farewell to the Thénardiers that Grantaire barely catches, because his thoughts are elsewhere, and takes Grantaire by the elbow and leads him out. He's silent until they're both in the car, and then he closes his hands around the wheel and takes a deep breath and doesn't move to turn the key in the ignition. "Are you all right?"

Grantaire turns his head slowly to look at him.

"No, stupid question. Of course you're not all right, I can see that much just by looking at you." He turns his head to do so, to look at Grantaire. "Will you tell me why?"

"I'm sorry." Grantaire squeezes his eyes shut and drops his head back against the headrest. "I screwed things up for you, I know. I'm sorry. I told you I wasn't going to be any good at this."

"For God's sake, that's not what I'm worried about!" Grantaire senses movement, an instant before Enjolras's hand closes around his arm, demanding. _"Are you okay?"_

"No," Grantaire says unsteadily. There's no point in denying it when Enjolras already knows.

"Please, will you tell me why? Will you let me help?"

There isn't a single thing Enjolras can do to make any of this better, but he sounds so desperate that Grantaire sighs, and scrubs a hand over his forehead, and tries to give him what he can. "The pelt," he says, and then doesn't know how to go on. Any selkie would understand the significance of those two words.

Any selkie wouldn't have had to ask in the first place.

"They brought the pelt out and I..."

Enjolras releases his breath all at once, as though struck by understanding. "It's hard," he says quietly. "I know. You can know the crimes a person has committed, but to see it like that, right in front of you. To look at that pelt and think that it once belonged to a magnificent animal, that that animal gave its life so that they could stand there and demand money for its fur... It isn't easy. I know."

Grantaire shuts his eyes and nods, and lets Enjolras think that that's why he's so upset. It's not as though he can tell him the truth, and that's as close to it as Enjolras is going to get without knowing what Grantaire is.

He's aware of Enjolras starting the car and pulling out onto the street, aware of the rev of the engine and occasional whine of the brakes, but he pays no attention to where they're going because all that matters is what he's leaving behind. Eventually, Enjolras pulls the car over and lets it idle, and Grantaire lifts his head to find them in front of Éponine's house.

"I'm sorry that was so upsetting," Enjolras says quietly, looking at his dashboard like it holds some vital information. "I was glad to have you there, though. It helped."

Grantaire's not sure how he possibly could have, but he swallows down his misery and nods acknowledgment. "I need to go," he says, and Enjolras lets him.

He unlocks the door and lets himself inside. His hope that Éponine might still be out canvassing with Combeferre is crushed almost instantly by the sound of choked sobs coming from the kitchen. For an instant, he's certain that she's somehow learned already about what happened and he's the reason she's crying like her heart's been broken. He recognizes it as a ridiculous thought almost immediately, but the guilt weighs heavy on his heart all the same. "Éponine?"

The noises are swallowed down almost immediately. He follows them to their source and finds Éponine slumped in a chair at the table, her eyes red and swollen, tear tracks unmistakeable on her cheeks despite the way she tries to wipe the evidence away.

He's by her side immediately, dropping down to his knees next to her chair and taking her hands into his. "What is it? What's happened?"

"I'm such an idiot," she whispers, and her voice breaks.

"What did he do?"

She lifts her head at that, and stares at him through her tears with a confused expression. "Who?"

"Combeferre. You were with him today, and now you're crying. _What did he do?_ "

She extends her arm between them. She's wearing a bracelet he doesn't remember her having on in the morning, pieces of beach glass strung together with silver wire to make a cuff. She doesn't give any other answer, so Grantaire takes a moment and then says, "He gave this to you?" It's pretty. He doesn't understand why it's making her cry.

"He's going to make me fall in love with him," she says in a broken whisper, and _oh_. "And then he's going to trap me here, or he's going to choose someone else, some human woman who wasn't raised in the sea and who knows how to act like a normal person, and it doesn't matter which because either way, I can't do this again." She tips her face up, letting the tears stream freely down her cheeks. "I can't, Grantaire. I was stupid enough to do it once with Marius, and I can't do it again. But he's so kind, and he talks to me, and he _listens_ to me, and he brings me tea and he gives me things like _this_. I didn't even tell him I love beach glass, how could he just know?"

"Ep…" He doesn't know what else to say. He pulls her down off her chair and into his arms, and they kneel there together on her kitchen floor, clinging to one another.

What she needs is her pelt. She needs the freedom to choose her own way, so she won't feel trapped here, so she won't _be_ trapped here. She needs to be able to slip through the waves and dive down into the blackest waters and remember what it feels like to be strong, so she'll know that she _is_ strong. He could buy her pelt for her, but five thousand dollars is a lot of money, it'll take time to earn it, or to borrow it. And with her shaking and sobbing in his arms, he knows time is the one thing they can't afford. She'll fall in love with Combeferre, she's been headed down that road for weeks now, and if Grantaire had known it was going to lead her to a place like this he'd have done more to discourage her. Wasn't that what she'd warned him about, after all? That a lost heart is much more difficult to retrieve than a lost pelt.

Her heart's not lost yet, though, not irretrievably. He doesn't have the money, but he knows where her pelt is, and in the end, that's all he needs, isn't it?

"I'm going to make this right," he whispers against the crown of her head. "I'm going to fix this, Ep. I promise."


	13. Chapter 13

He waits until night, until he's made Éponine soup and frowned at her until she's eaten most of it, until he's brewed chamomile tea and draped a blanket over her shoulders and pressed her hands around the warm mug, until she's nodded off on the couch with tear tracks still staining her cheeks and he's sent her off to bed so she won't have to deal with a backache in the morning, in addition to her heartache. And when it's been long enough that he's reasonably certain she's not going to rouse again and come back out for something, he pulls on his coat and his shoes, grabs Éponine's keys and her cell phone and an empty duffel bag lying forgotten in the bottom of her coat closet, and he locks the door up behind himself.

The air is cold, with an extra bite when the breeze shifts to come in off the water. The sky overhead is full of stars and wispy clouds. It's the sort of night Grantaire might take a walk through to soothe a foul temper, but tonight there's nothing in the world that can soothe him. By the time he's reached the Thénardier home, the cool, crisp night hase clarified his rage into something as hard and sharp as a diamond.

The house is dark, the hour late enough that even the most determined of night owls ought to have retreated to their beds. Grantaire pulls Éponine's phone out of his pocket and sends identical texts to Joly and Bossuet, only the Thénardier's address and _pick me up in ten_. Then he locks the phone, double-checks that it's set to silent, and considers the house.

By this point, breaking in almost feels routine. He makes a circuit around the house, twisting doorknobs and testing windows for any left fortuitously unlocked. There aren't any, that would be too much to hope for, but the Thénardiers' security is subpar compared to Enjolras's. Their windows are shut but they don't have wood blocks to brace them, and it's only a matter of a few minutes to work one off its tracks. He nearly spoils the whole endeavor when the window tips inward, and he has a moment to catch his breath and brace for the sound of shattering glass to break the stillness of the night, but he catches it before it hits the flower, and holds his breath as he lowers it the rest of the way to lean propped against the wall.

The window's narrow and it's a tight fit, but he manages to fit his shoulders through and climb into what seems to be a spare bathroom. It's scarcely two strides wide, and takes him less than a second to cross and to ease the door open, holding his breath and praying for well-oiled hinges.

The door sticks a little, but doesn't squeak, and that's really all that he can ask for. He slips through, takes just a moment to get his bearings, and then starts down the hall to the office the Thénardiers had shown him and Enjolras to only hours before.

He pulls the box out from where he'd seen the Thénardiers store it, rips the top off and only manages not to tear the paper away for fear of the noise waking them. He takes a breath and unfolds it instead, lifts Éponine's pelt out and tucks it carefully into the duffel bag. With it secured away, he rises to his feet and nearly leaves, but his attention is drawn to the desk in the corner of the room. It takes him longer than it should to realize what it was that caught his eye — a thin, leather-bound book lying on the desk's corner, half-buried beneath a pile of papers and receipts. Grantaire moves to the desk and slides the book out from beneath the clutter, flips it open and is rewarded by what seems to almost certainly be a ledger of some sort, columns of dates and figures and what might be letters to identify customers from one another.

Evidence. That's what Enjolras said they still need, that's what this whole undercover farce has been to try to find, and this is surely that. Grantaire will fight any one of them to the death before he'll let them take Éponine's pelt from him, even Enjolras, but maybe he can give them this instead. Maybe he can still help ensure that the Thénardiers never get to do this to another selkie again.

He tucks the ledger under his arm, grabs a couple more promising-looking books from the desk, and then hurries back down the hall to the bathroom and through the window. He's just making his way back up to the sidewalk when a car comes flying up and screeches to a stop in front of the Thénardiers. Joly comes tumbling out of the passenger side, wild-eyed and snarling a hushed, "Grantaire, what do you think you're doing?" to the shadows.

Grantaire comes forward into the light of the street lamp. Joly spins to him and looks nearly swamped by relief at the sight. "Christ! What are you thinking? Get in before you get arrested for trespassing!"

Grantaire lets himself be bundled into the backseat of the car. Bahorel shoots him a look from the driver's seat that's equal parts disapproval and concern, but he doesn't say anything. As soon as Joly's back in the car, he takes off, flying through the quiet, sleepy streets back towards Éponine's.

"What the hell was that?" Joly demands when they're halfway there. "Did you decide to go rogue? We don't do these things solo for a _reason_. That was dangerous! What if they'd caught you? What if they'd decided not to bother the police and to just take justice into their own hands?"

"They didn't," Grantaire says. And if they had, it would have still been worth it. He drops the duffel down to his feet, where hopefully neither of them will notice it, and hands over the ledgers and books. "We saw these when we were there earlier today. I think the wife was suspicious, I didn't want them to destroy the evidence while we were all still debating what to do."

"So you decided to break in." Joly's laughter is a little wild. "God, Bahorel will be so proud. Enjolras, too, come to think of it. Couldn't you have asked one of them to come be your getaway driver?"

"I don't really know Bahorel. And Enjolras…" Enjolras is complicated, and probably the sort to have noticed the duffel bag no matter how quickly Grantaire stuffed it down by his feet. "You two are my friends."

That gets him startled glances and slow, pleased smiles. When Joly says, "All right, hand that book over, let's see what was so important for you to risk your hide over," his words are softer and much more fond.

Grantaire lets them have it. Joly opens it and flips through, while Bossuet strains to see and Joly admonishes him to keep his eyes on the road before he gets them all into a fiery wreck.

They're nearly back to Éponine's when Joly says in a strangled voice, "Grantaire… do you know what this is?"

He leans forward between the two front seats. "A ledger, it seemed like."

_"Proof._ It's what we've been waiting for all this time, proof solid enough to get the police depatment's attention."

"That's good, then."

"Good?" Joly twists around to stare at him. "Enjolras is going to _kiss you_ when you give this to him."

Grantaire flushes and sits back in his seat. He's pretty sure the others don't know that Enjolras has already done that, and didn't need exciting evidence to make him want to. He lets the comment go unremarked-upon, and when they pull up in front of Éponine's house moments later, he grabs his bag from the floor and doesn't move to take the ledgers back. "You'll give those to him, won't you?"

They both frown at him like he's suddenly started speaking gibberish. "You're the one who committed a felony to get your hands on those books, I think you deserve to be the one to give them to it."

Grantaire just shakes his head. "I didn't do it to impress him. Please, will you just make sure he gets them?"

"We'll see to it," Bossuet says over Joly's shoulder, and then pulls on his arm to get him back in the car. Joly stares after Grantaire like he's unconvinced, but Grantaire just turns his back on them to make his way up to the house, and a moment later he hears the car rumble off down the road.

*

He waits until it's nearly dawn, though every minute feels like an agony. But Éponine was exhausted, and she went to bed late, and he knows she won't stop to rest once she has her pelt back in her hands, so he lets her have as much sleep as she can. When morning is nearing, he pads quietly into her room and touches her shoulder. "Ep," he whispers. "Ep, come on. Get up."

She grumbles and drags the blankets over her head. "Go away. It's the middle of the night."

"It's morning. Come on, get up."

"Morning doesn't start until the sun comes up. Let me sleep."

"If you wait until the sun's up, there'll be people on the beach, and that's going to make things difficult."

She pushes the blankets down enough to frown at him. "What are you going on about?"

_"Éponine."_

"Fine! Christ." She throws the covers back with a snarl and swings her legs out of bed. He takes her by the arm to urge her to her feet and guide her out of the bedroom. As soon as they near the kitchen, she pulls out of his grip and heads straight for the coffee maker.

Grantaire lets her go. She'll sulk if he tries to keep her from her caffeine at this hour of the morning, and this isn't something he wants to upset her over. He takes his seat at the table and holds the duffel on his lap, his fingers wrapped perhaps a bit too tight around the bag's handles.

When the machine is going, the water hissing and popping as it starts to brew, Éponine comes over to join him and drops into her chair, slumped forward and looking weary beyond the telling of it. "All right." She drags a hand through her hair, pulling it back out of her face. "Tell me what it is that was so important you had to wake me up at the crack of dawn for it."

He shoves the duffel bag into her hands, onto her lap. She blinks down at it, and then up at him. "Sweaty gym clothes? I'm touched."

_"Open it."_

He's trying not to give it away, but there must be something in his voice that clues her in that there's something more than she thinks going on here, because instead of teasing him again, she presses her lips together and gives him an uncertain, considering look. If she doesn't open the bag in the next ten seconds, Grantaire thinks he's going to snap and rip it out of her hands so he can do it himself. She's so close, why can't she just _open the bag_ …

Finally, she reaches for the zipper. "If this really is your sweaty gym clothes, I'm going to be so unimpressed," she says as the bag starts to open. "I don't know why you have to be so cagey, but—"

She breaks off abruptly, staring down at the spill off brown fur revealed inside the bag. For an endless moment, she's frozen in place, her mouth half-open, her lips curved to form sounds never uttered. She hovers a hand over the pelt like she's too afraid to touch it, then buries her fingers deep with a soft, wondering cry.

"Oh my god." She's choked. She sounds like she's going to cry. Grantaire wants to hug her, but she pulls the pelt out across her lap, letting the bag fall to the ground, unimportant. She presses her face into the fur. "Oh my god. _Grantaire._ "

"It's yours." Of course she'd know that, she'd have recognized it by sight just as he had, and once she touched it there would be no doubt, but it still feels important to say out loud, to make it real.

_"How?"_

"It doesn't matter." He slides his chair forward and covers her hands with his. "Go."

She looks at him like that one word is the greatest gift he could ever give her. "I have to."

"Of course you do."

"Will you come with me?"

It's going to kill him to watch her swim away and know that he can't follow, but there's only one answer he can give. "Of course."

"Now?"

He nods. "Before the sun comes up and the people come out."

She doesn't bother to change out of her thin pajamas. There's not much point. The cold won't bother her enough to matter, and even if it does, it won't for long. They just put their shoes on, both of them, and Grantaire shrugs a coat on because he'll have a longer walk than she will. She bundles the pelt up in her arms and catches his gaze for a long moment. He watches her shoulders rise and fall with a single, deep breath. "Let's go."

They go. He's not going to be the one to hold her back.

They walk in silence, and that's all right. Grantaire doesn't figure he'd be up for much conversation in her place, either. Every so often, her fingers go tight on the pelt or her gaze drifts off into the distance, looking pensive, or maybe just thoughtful.

"You can stay, if you want," he says quietly. He doesn't expect her to take him up on it, but it seems important that she hears the words, all the same. "We can keep your pelt safe together. No one's ever going to lay a hand on it again."

She looks tempted, but shakes her head without hesitation. "No. I want to go _home_."

It's no less than he expected. He nods, and they make their way down the cliff stair to the beach below. Under normal circumstances, Grantaire would walk the beach a ways, to somewhere a little less accessible, a little less likely to be interrupted, but Éponine makes straight for the surf and he can't say he blames her.

She wades out until the water's up to her calves and the hems of her pajama pants are soaked through. She laughs and crouches down to put a hand in the water, and Grantaire remembers what she said during their day at the beach and wonders if this is the first time she's let herself be in it in all the years she's been away.

She comes back, splashing through the surf on her way back to him, and drops her pelt into the sand so she can start stripping her clothes off. "You can stay in the house, of course," she says, the words coming so fast that they practically trip over each other. "Be careful of the upstairs pipes, they like to leak in winter."

Grantaire nods, unable to speak, and takes each article of clothing from her as she strips it off until she's standing before him in only her skin, the pelt gripped tight in her hands. "I wish you could come," she says, and her voice breaks.

He nods, and doesn't dare speak.

She throws her arms around him and squeezes him tight, her face pressed into his shoulder. "Thank you."

He hugs her hard, then releases her. "Go," he says, and smiles.

She steps back and throws the pelt around her shoulders. He has just a moment to see her smiling, blissfully happy, before the fur stretches out across her skin and her shape starts to change. She drops forward, and by the time she hits the sand, she's a seal.

Grantaire comes up to her and kneels down in the wet sand. She stares at him with big, dark eyes and gives a single bark that might mean anything. Thanks, or an apology, or anything at all. He puts a hand on her muzzle and smiles through his heartbreak when she nuzzles into his touch. "Go on, Ep. I'll be right behind you."

She bobs her head and slaps her tail against the water, then wheels about and takes off into the waves.

Grantaire sits where he is, letting the water swirl about his feet, and watches her make her way out to sea. She doesn't stop and she doesn't look back, and he can't blame her. He wouldn't either.

He stays long past when she's disappeared from sight, watching the sky fade and then color overhead, before he can find it in himself to push himself up to his feet and head back to the house that he can't call hers anymore.


	14. Chapter 14

The first thing he does when he gets back to Éponine's house — to _his_ house, now, he supposes — is sleep. It seems like there ought to be something more significant, more meaningful, done to mark her departure, but after the long, trying day and staying up all night just to wake her, he barely manages to lock the door behind himself before he staggers to his bed and falls face-first upon it.

He sleeps much later than he's used to. It's well past noon when he finally rouses, and only then because of the insistent buzzing of Éponine's phone against his hip, where he forgot to remove it from his pocket before passing out.

There's two missed calls indicated on the screen, a text from Combeferre that he can't bear to open, and another from Bossuet's number that he pulls up, squinting against the brightness of the afternoon light coming in through the window.

_The Musain, 5pm sharp,_ it says. _Be there or we'll hunt you down! I'm buying you a drink._

It came in a few hours ago, so Grantaire doesn't feel too pressed to respond immediately. He lets the phone lie on his chest for a moment and throws an arm over his eyes to block the light, and make the transition into wakefulness a little less jarring.

He's not sure what to do with himself, now that Éponine's gone. He could sit in whatever chair at the kitchen table he likes now, and there's no reason not to, but he doesn't know that he'll ever be able to get to a point where he's comfortable claiming Éponine's as his own. He's going to have to figure out the solutions to his cooking disasters all on his own now.

He's not going to have anyone else to talk to. Not _really_ talk, not honestly. She's the only one who knew the truth, and it was such a relief to have a friend around whom he didn't have to constantly lie to.

When he finally lifts the phone again and starts formulating a reply, he tries for the same light, cheerful tone that Bossuet's conveyed, but the best he can manage after five minutes of typing and deleting and rephrasing is, _I'll be there_.

He's not much in the mood for celebrating, when Éponine's gone and he can't follow. But she'd give him a sidelong glance and then a cutting remark about being stupid, if she were there to hear him say so. She wouldn't want her freedom to be a source of unhappiness.

He drags himself out of bed and showers and dresses and feeds himself, and takes his time at all of it, so when the time to meet at the Musain comes he feels as though the entire day has tiptoed past him and fled away while he wasn't looking. But his best friend's gone and he can't follow, and he thinks he's allowed just one day to mourn that. Tomorrow he can get back to being happy for her.

The Musain is a riot of sounds when he enters it. There's a fair amount of customers, but most of the noise is coming from Les Amis at the back. A hearty round of cheering goes up when someone catches sight of him, and Bossuet comes over and throws an arm around his shoulders. "You haven't ordered yet, have you? I told you, I'm buying you a drink."

"I can buy my own tea."

"Of course you can, that's not the point." He flags down a barista. "One tea for the man of the hour, please."

She nods and accepts the handful of bills he passes over, and Grantaire finds himself herded back to the group, where everyone looks delighted to see him. If he'd known it was going to be like this, he'd have stayed home after all.

He finds his usual table, against the window and the wall, but rather than leave him alone like they normally do, everyone crowds around, pulling their tables close, boosting themselves up to sit on the back of the booth seat when chairs prove elusive.

He feels claustrophobic surrounded by them all, and he nearly bolts until Enjolras slides into the seat next to him and settles him with a touch on his knee. "Are you all right?" He keeps his voice pitched low, just between the two of them.

Grantaire gulps air and nods, even though it feels like at least half a lie. "I'm just— It's a little loud."

"They're happy. They're celebrating." His hand tightens on Grantaire's knee. "It's thanks to you, you know. Those ledgers… they're what we've been waiting for, the final piece of the puzzle to make our case."

"I know. That's why I took them."

"Yes. Joly and Bossuet told me about that." His grip briefly tightens even more, just enough to flirt with the edge of pain before Enjolras takes a deep breath and pulls his hand away like Grantaire's the one who hurt _him_. "Excuse me while I give you the requisite lecture about _how fucking stupid that was_. You could have been arrested. Or worse, it's not as though the Thénardiers are decent, law-abiding people."

"I've already been given this lecture. It was pretty much the first thing out of Joly's mouth."

"Good," Enjolras says, his expression burning bright with intensity. "I'm glad. You could stand to hear it again. I'm grateful for what you've found, Grantaire, don't think I'm not. But it wasn't worth the risk to you."

It was, but Grantaire can't tell him why, so he just hangs his head forwrd and tries to look contrite, until Bossuet shoulders his way into the seat opposite them and sets a large, steaming mug of tea in front of Grantaire. "Come on, Enjolras, this is supposed to be a party. He's been duly scolded, now let him off the hook a little, will you? We can't have him looking glum at his own party."

"This is a _planning session_ ," Enjolras says, looking amused. "You lot are the ones who decided to co-opt it into something else."

"Sure, like you haven't been whooping and hollering just as loud as the rest of us," Joly says, hanging over the back of the booth beside Bossuet. He catches Grantaire's eye and grins. "You should have seen him, he was as excited as a little boy at Christmas when we gave him those books."

"We should have wrapped them," Bossuet says. "Let him tear it open. That would have been better."

Enjolras just rolls his eyes and smiles good-naturedly at the teasing. "Now that I've managed to get you all focused and in one place, though," he says, and people are already groaning before he's even finished his sentence. "We _should_ take the opportunity to start planning our next move, and what we want to do with this information."

Courfeyrac sidles in and takes a seat beside Joly and Bossuet, though the booth isn't really meant to sit more than two on a side. They squish in close together to make it work, and none of them seem to mind the close quarters. "I thought our game plan was just to hand it all over to Officer Lamarque and let him run with it."

Enjolras nods. "It is, more or less. But we have to be sure he'll be convinced. All the information we've gathered is kind of a mess, can one of the law students take it all and make something organized and convincing out of it?"

"I can do that." Courfeyrac raises his hand, like they're in school. "I've got a light load this week, shouldn't be too hard."

Enjolras nods and smiles his thanks. "Combeferre, do you think you could work up something official-sounding about the observed impact all this poaching has had on the local seal population?"

"Definitely." Combeferre's gaze slides around the group, then lands finally on Grantaire, a small furrow drawn between his brows. "Did Éponine not come with you? We worked well together last time, and I could use her help. Will you ask her if she'd mind giving me a hand with this?"

Grantaire feels as if he's swallowed a stone, his gut churning heavily. He turns his mug of tea around and around in his hands, concentrating hard on not spilling it so he doesn't have to look at Combeferre. "She's gone out of town, actually. Visiting family." It's all true enough, but it still feels like deception. "I don't expect she'll be back soon enough to help you out."

Combeferre says, "Ah," and nods and starts asking the others who wants to help him out in her stead. Grantaire tries to convince himself that he didn't look the littlest bit crushed by the news.

"How quickly do you think you can get that together?" Enjolras asks, looking at Combeferre and Courfeyrac both.

"A few days?" Combeferre shrugs.

Courfeyrac nods agreement. "Same. We've been working on this all long enough, it shouldn't take me too long to just write up what we've already been talking about for weeks, and throw some legal jargon in on top of it all to keep things suitably official."

"By the end of the week for both, do you think?"

Combeferre hums a thoughtful noise and Courfeyrac says, "I don't see why not," and Grantaire feels like he's suffocating. Everyone is too close, everything is pressing in on him. The week's already half over, and the end of it will come too fast. And then they'll turn the case they've made over to the police, and Grantaire's pelt along with it, and he'll be stuck here for years, at best. Forever, if he's truly unlucky.

"Excuse me," he mutters to Enjolras, and can hardly even bring himself to wait long enough for Enjolras to move aside before he's sliding out of the booth and rushing to the bathroom

It's empty, thank god. He paces across the end of the room, where he at least has room for his elbows without feeling penned in. The coolness of the room and the merciful absence of other people at last manages to get his breathing coming a little steadier. His pulse slows, not all the way back to normal but at least enough so it doesn't feel like his heart is going to explode right out of his chest. Eventually, the restless energy that drove him there drains away, leaving him exhausted, and he stops his pacing to lean his back against the cool tile wall and slide down to sit on the floor.

He can't lose his pelt. That's the one thing he knows for sure. He rather expects that breaking into a police station to retrieve his pelt is going to be significantly more difficult than breaking into a house. So the only choice he has is to get it back now, before they turn it over.

He's going to ruin their case, if he takes it back. Enjolras has said all along that the pelt is their primary piece of evidence proving that the Thénardiers are doing something illegal. If he takes that away, their case might fall apart. The Thénardiers might go free and unpunished for the things they've done to so many selkies.

Grantaire squeezes his eyes shut and shakes his head. He can't think about that. They're a tenacious bunch, he knows that much already. They'll find other evidence. They'll make Officer Lamarque listen to them. They don't need him, or his pelt, not when he's already given up so much in pursuit of this. He won't give up this, too.

The bathroom door creaks open. Grantaire keeps his eyes squeezed shut and hopes that whoever it is will be polite enough to ignore the man having a breakdown in the corner and just pee and leave so he can get back to it in solitude.

Footsteps cross the tile floor slowly and pause right in front of him. "Are you all right?"

Grantaire drops his hands and looks up at Enjolras.

His mouth pulls up in a faint, rueful smile. "Stupid question," he says, and lowers himself down to sit on the floor beside Grantaire. "Do you want to talk about it?"

Grantaire shakes his head desperately, miserably.

Enjolras accepts it with a nod and doesn't say anything else, and Grantaire is nearly bowled over with gratitude at how easy he makes it. He holds a hand out between them, palm up, his brows raised in question but not demand, and Grantaire finds that it's not as hard as he expected to place his hand in Enjolras's and let him clasp them together.

They're quiet for long minutes, just breathing together. Grantaire stares down at where Enjolras's fingers wrap around his hand, strong and sure and undemanding. Slowly, as the panic begins to recede, the pieces start to fit themselves together in his head.

Enjolras still has his pelt. Stealing it back again isn't an option, not after his first failed attempt left Enjolras so much more cautious. But it's not the only option available to him. There are others.

There's _one_ other, in any case.

He takes a deep breath that must sound like he's readying himself for something, because it makes Enjolras look up at him, ready, waiting. "I'd like to leave," he says, firm.

"You can go home whenever you like, of course. The others would like to celebrate with you, but they won't force you to stay if you'd rather go."

Grantaire shakes his head hard, his lips pinching with frustration. "No, I mean—" He tightens his hand on Enjolras's. "Can we go back to your place? Please?"

Enjolras's expression goes through a series of transformations, none of which Grantaire knows how to identify. It finally settles on one that's carefully neutral, and when he nods and says, "Sure. Yeah. We can do that, if it's what you want," there's an evenness to his voice that feels like it takes a great deal of effort to maintain.

"I would. Please."

Enjolras smiles and squeezes Grantaire's hand. "Then we will."

*

Enjolras leads him out of the bathroom, when he's ready, and back into the Musain to make their excuses. Grantaire lets him handle it, because his stomach is churning with nerves and he doesn't think he could speak if he had to.

The others are disappointed -- more by Enjolras's departure than Grantaire's, he thinks -- but a few of them glance down at their linked hands and grin or whistle suggestively, and then don't protest too much longer. Grantaire lets them make their assumptions, and in a few moments they've said their good-byes to everyone and have made their way out into the cool air of evening.

"Do you want to walk?" Enjolras asks, hesitating just outside the door. "I know you're not a fan of cars."

Grantaire looks at him, surprised, then shakes his head. "No, not today. Let's drive."

"Are you sure--"

"Please." Walking will take longer, and Grantaire doesn't know if his nerves can take it.

Enjolras accepts with a nod and leads him over to the parking lot to where his car is waiting. They have to release each other's hands, then, so Enjolras can get behind the wheel and Grantaire can circle around the car to the passenger's seat. He can still feel the warmth and pressure of Enjolras's hand in his, though, and he scrubs his palm against the rough denim of his jeans to try to chase away the ghost of that memory.

They drive in silence, the radio off and the rumble of the engine the only sound. Grantaire is aware of Enjolras glancing over at him occasionally, though he doesn't say anything, like maybe he thinks Grantaire is going to bolt while the car's still moving, or just vanish like a mirage.

They pull up in front of Enjolras's house, and he turns the engine off and lets it die, then just sits there for a moment, the silence of the night wrapping all around them. Grantaire watches him, waiting for some clue as to what he's thinking, so when Enjolras glances at him this time he catches his gaze without even meaning to.

Enjolras lets out a sudden rush of air like he's been punched. He leans across the space between them, one hand braced against the parking brake, the other sliding up into Grantaire's hair. He leans in, his breath warm on Grantaire's mouth, his eyes sliding closed, and Grantaire doesn't wait for him to ask. He meets him halfway, his lips on Enjolras's, Enjolras's parting on an unsteady breath before his hand tightens and he kisses Grantaire, hard.

Grantaire's hand finds his way to Enjolras's shoulder, fingers pressing deep to hold on as Enjolras's mouth moves against his, as he sucks Grantaire's lip into his mouth and scrapes it between his teeth. It sparks a bolt of heat through Grantaire that leaves him gasping, and sends Enjolras scrambling back, running a hand through his hair and looking chagrined. "Come on," he says between great, heaving lungfuls of air. "Let's get inside while we still can."

Grantaire walks at his side, up the path and the steps and into the house. Enjolras swings the door shut behind them, then steals into Grantaire's space, crowding him until the door is at his back and Enjolras at his front, looking at him with eyes that burn and a faint smile lingering about the corners of his mouth, like this is exactly where he wants to be.

He curves his hands around the back of Grantaire's neck and slides his mouth against Grantaire's, all heat and wet and wonder. Grantaire opens for him, wraps his arms around Enjolras's back and pulls him in, meets him eagerly when Enjolras gives a quiet groan against his mouth and takes the kiss deep.

It's so easy to let them both get carried away, so much nicer than what he actually came there to do, so Grantaire doesn't rush to end it. Enjolras leans in, pressing him back against the door and making breathing just enough of a struggle that it's exhilarating. Grantaire drops his head back with a groan and twists his fingers through Enjolras's hair when he moves his kisses down Grantaire's neck.

"Christ," Enjolras mutters, sucking a bruise high on his shoulders. "Look at me. I'm sorry. I could at least let you through the door properly."

Grantaire blinks his eyes open to stare at Enjolras. "I'm inside."

"You don't have to be pedantic. I'm trying to be nice." He drops kisses along the collar of Grantaire's shirt, his hands skimming down to settle low on Grantaire's hips.

It's nice, it's so nice, but it's not going to make what he has to do any easier. Grantaire squeezes his eyes shut, strokes his hands over Enjolras's head, and lets himself enjoy it for just a moment. "Actually…"

Immediately, Enjolras stills. When Grantaire can't find any further words, Enjolras lifts his head to meet his gaze. Enjolras's is quiet, questioning.

"Can we talk?"

"Of course." He puts space between them, enough for Grantaire to breathe. He keeps his hands low on Grantaire's hips, but looks ready to drop even that contact at the slightest word from Grantaire. "Do you want to talk about something specific, or just in general?"

"Something specific." Grantaire clears his throat and shifts to the side, so he can move past Enjolras and away from the door. Enjolras lets his hands fall away and turns after him, but lets Grantaire put space between them. "Do you still have the pelt here?"

Enjolras nods, watching Grantaire like he's still trying to figure out what this could be about, and what the pelt has to do with it. "I got a safe for it, after the break-in."

"Could you get it?" Enjolras's brow furrows and he starts to say something, but Grantaire speaks over him. "Please. Just trust me."

Enjolras is still for a moment. Finally he lifts one shoulder in a shrug like it's no big deal, though his brow is still creased and his eyes still search Grantaire's for an explanation. He moves away, though, toward the bedroom. Grantaire lets him go alone, without Grantaire there hanging over his shoulder.

Enjolras returns in a moment, the carefully-folded pelt in his hands. He hands it to Grantaire like it's nothing, like he doesn't even realize the import of the gesture.

Of course he doesn't, but it nearly takes Grantaire down at the knees. He takes the pelt and struggles to breathe at the feel of the fur against his hands, so soft and so familiar. He meant to be gentle with it, but his hands tighten reflexively. 

Enjolras is watching him closely, noting everything he does, every gesture and every flicker of emotion across Grantaire's face. "What is it?" he asks after a moment. "Something's upset you. What is it?"

Grantaire shakes his head wildly. Enjolras doesn't know it yet, but the question's not important. "You can ask me whatever you like after, but please, let me talk first."

Enjolras is looking more concerned by the minute, but he just nods and guides Grantaire over to the living room. He gestures to the couch, waits until Grantaire's sat on it, then pulls up an armchair so that he's sitting right in front of him, leaning in, so focused. "Okay. Talk."

Grantaire stares down at the pelt in his hands and finds that every word has fled him. "What-- Have you ever heard of selkies?" It's a struggle to get the word through his throat and out into the air between them. All his life has been a lesson in the desperate need for secrecy, in why they can't ever let the humans know about their existence. He feels like he's going to suffocate, or like his heart is going to beat right out of his chest. But this is important. He buries his fingers in the pelt and forces himself to keep going.

"Mythology, right? Shape-changers, like werewolves I suppose, but seals. Did I remember that right? It's been a while."

It's almost worse that Enjolras takes his question at face value. It would be easier if he treated it like a joke. Easier to keep his distance, easier not to care. Easier to walk away when all this is over. "It's close enough," he says quietly, staring down at the folds of the pelt. "Except they're not myth."

Enjolras frowns, not like he's angry but like he's puzzled. "I'm sorry?"

"They're real. _We're_ real." Grantaire is shaking. It isn't fear, it's just nerves, adrenaline spiking through his system because _they don't do this_ , not ever. But the Amis are going to turn his pelt over as evidence in a matter of days, and he's out of options if he ever wants to go home again. "We're seal people, and we change our shape by shedding or donning our pelts." He runs a hand over his out of reflex. Enjolras follows the motion and startles, as though he'd forgotten it was there. "The Thénardiers haven't been poaching, not in the way you think. They haven't been killing seals, they've been stealing selkie pelts. That's why I came on land, to find out who was doing it and to stop them. You and your friends have been an incredible help with that, and I'm so grateful. I don't know how I ever would have found them without you all. But--" His voice wavers and threatens to break. Grantaire waits, head bowed, until he's regained control of himself. "This one. I didn't find it on the beach, like I let you believe that day. It's mine. I can't change without it and Enjolras, _please_ , I want to go home." He shuts his eyes and shudders, gasping as he fights against the sudden burn of desperate tears. "Please, don't give it to the police. Let me have it back. Let me go _home, please_."

"I don't understand," Enjolras says after a moment of endless silence, and now he sounds angry. Grantaire flinches away from it and forces himself to open his eyes, and that's worse because Enjolras doesn't just look mad, he looks _hurt_. "Are you trying to keep us from going to the police? No, never mind that, obviously you are, that's what you're asking for right now, but I don't understand why. I can't believe you're working with them, you had plenty of easier opportunities to derail our investigation that wouldn't have required you to concoct such an outrageous story. But I don't understand why you'd want to sabotage--"

"For God's sake." Grantaire snarls and bolts to his feet, one hand still clenched tight in the pelt. "I'll _show_ you." He takes two strides away from the couch, out into an area of the living room that's got enough space for him to change without risking Enjolras's furniture, and begins to undress, starting with his shoes and socks.

"What are you doing?" Enjolras is on his feet, spinning after him. "Stop. _Jesus._ " He turns away with a broken sound and one hand over his eyes when Grantaire starts on his pants.

Grantaire kicks them off and strides back to Enjolras. He grabs him by the arm and shakes him. " _Watch_. I'm not going to have you claim this was some sort of ridiculous slight-of-hand just because you had your back turned when it happened."

Enjolras drops his hand and stares at Grantaire, his mouth pressed into a flat, furious line, his eyes gone hard as stone. It strikes like a knife to Grantaire's heart to have him look at him that way, but the only way to fix it is to prove that he isn't lying, that he isn't a saboteur. "Watch," he says again, to be sure, and steps back so that there's enough room for him to throw the pelt around his shoulders.

It settles into place immediately, heavy and warm and familiar. Grantaire closes his eyes as he feels it wrap around him, fur stretching farther than the pelt itself could reach, spreading across his skin with a prickle of heat. He kneels before the change overtakes him completely, so that there's a shorter distance to fall when his legs fuse into a tail. The impact of it still sounds like thunder, and sends the dishes in Enjolras's cupboards and the glass in his windows rattling.

When it's done, there's nothing but the sound of their unmatched, ragged breathing. Grantaire opens his eyes when the silence is too much to bear. Colors are muted with these eyes, but his vision's sharper than ever. He can't miss the stunned look on Enjolras's face, torn between disbelief and wonder, or the way he gropes blindly behind himself and drops down hard onto the edge of the chair. "Grantaire?"

He gives a bark of acknowledgment. Enjolras jumps back and covers his face with his hands as he gives a shock of wild laughter. "Oh Christ. Could you change back, please?"

He can't frown in this shape, but he gives an angry thrash of his tail that seems to get the message across just fine on its own.

"Please?" Enjolras comes off the couch and kneels down in front of him. He reaches a hand out, then hesitates like he's afraid to touch Grantaire now. Grantaire pushes his head into his palm, and Enjolras lets out a sharp breath. "It's just, if someone happens to glance in and see a seal in my living room, they're going to have questions that I don't really have answers for."

Grantaire huffs out air to show his irritation, but rolls over onto his back so he can scrape claws across his belly and catch at the pelt's edge. Enjolras stares at him hard as he splits it open and peels it off, and comes out shuddering and naked and human again. Enjolras is still staring, a frown forming between his brows again, and Grantaire says, "What?"

"I'm just trying to figure out how it works. How it happens."

"Magic is how it happens."

Enjolras rocks back on his heels as though watching Grantaire transform in front of his very eyes is one thing, but hearing the word _magic_ is just too much for him. He squares his shoulders and takes a deep breath, and Grantaire braces himself for some sort of lecture or tirade. But when Enjolras speaks, what he says is, "I owe you an apology."

Grantaire turns to face him, blinking in surprise.

Enjolras makes a helpless gesture. "I'm sorry. What I said, what I accused you of... it was out of line, and you didn't deserve it."

Grantaire moves toward him, but Enjolras makes a choked sound and puts a hand up to hold him back. "Could you-- Could you get dressed, please? I'm not going to be able to focus if you don't."

Grantaire puts his pants on, because it seems the most expedient way to get the greatest amount of skin covered as fast as possible, and then he comes over and sits beside Enjolras on the couch.

"I'm sorry," Enjolras says again. He sounds miserable, and he looks it, too, his back hunched and his hands caught between his knees. "I'm so sorry."

"They're just words," Grantaire says. "They didn't upset me that much. You don't need to grovel."

"Oh Christ, Grantaire, not for what I _said_." He turns and reaches out, but Grantaire's pelt is right there, bunched up on his lap, and he pulls his hands back like he's afraid it'll burn him. "All this time, all I wanted was to help the seals. And maybe I didn't know that they were selkies rather than seals, but still. They are -- _you_ are -- the ones I wanted to help and to save and instead..." He makes a wounded noise. "I made you into a victim. I said such grand things about everything I wanted to do for the seals, and then I trapped you here."

"To be fair," Grantaire says, "I was the one who broke into your house, that day you found me here." Some of Enjolras's misery is lost beneath a flash of shock, and then laughter, and it's a relief to see. "I could have taken my pelt then, but I couldn't do it. So you can't blame yourself for all of it."

Enjolras smiles, but it's infinitely sad. He shakes his head and sighs, "Grantaire," and it sounds so weary and so resigned that Grantaire knows he's going to try to take the blame again, before he even says a word. And he already looks so miserable, and that's not what Grantaire wanted from any of this, so he does the only thing he can think of to prevent it, and leans in and stops Enjolras's mouth with a kiss.

Enjolras makes a sharp, high sound against him. He brings his hands up, cupping Grantaire's face between them, and turns the kiss to something gentle and sweet. When he pulls away it's with a sigh, and leaves Grantaire's heart lodged tight in his throat.

Enjolras leans his forehead against Grantaire's and keeps his hands on either side of his face. It feels good, steadying. Grantaire closes his fingers loosely around Enjolras's wrists to keep him there. "Enjolras," he breathes. He makes himself open his eyes, because this isn't something he should hide from. "When you brought me here, you had a certain plan for the evening in mind, I think."

Enjolras looks chagrined. "We don't have to—"

"No. We don't." Grantaire sweeps his thumbs over the inside of Enjolras's wrists, feeling his pulse jackrabbit against the thin skin there. "But we can, if you still want to. If I didn't ruin things completely."

Enjolras makes that wounded-animal sound again. Grantaire is rapidly growing to hate it. "Oh God, Grantaire, you didn't ruin anything, if anyone did it was me, I can't—"

Grantaire tips his head and catches Enjolras's mouth with his. This kiss is a little faster, involves a little more teeth, and Enjolras is breathing hard when they part. More important, he's forgotten all about blaming himself. "Please don't," Grantaire breathes, leaning their foreheads together again. "Please. Just tell me if you still want this."

Enjolras searches his gaze for a long, long minute. At length, he nods slowly, and slides a hand around to graze his thumb over Grantaire's lip. "Yes," he says, barely a breath of sound, and leans in to kiss Grantaire with his thumb still caught between their lips. "Yes."


	15. Chapter 15

Enjolras's hands are gentle as he guides Grantaire backwards down the hall toward the bedroom. His kisses are eager, but he feels like he's still holding something back. Grantaire would tell him that he doesn't need to fear chasing him off, but he'd have to stop kissing him to do so, and he doesn't care for that idea at all.

Grantaire remembers the way to the bedroom, but not well enough to be graceful about it while moving backwards and half-hindered. His shoulder bounces off a corner as they come around it, and he kicks his heel against the door jamb as Enjolras tries to navigate him through it. Enjolras grimaces and gives an apology against his lips, and Grantaire silences him by kissing him harder, bringing one hand up to his hair to urge him into it.

Enjolras pulls him onto the bed when they reach it, as reluctant to release his hold as Grantaire is, so they end up tumbling down together in a pile of limbs and elbows. Enjolras lands half on top of him, still kissing him, and Grantaire looses what breath he has into the kiss.

He grabs onto handfuls of Enjolras's shirt to hold him close, and they kiss and kiss until Grantaire thinks he's going to lose his mind from it, until Enjolras at last pulls away and pushes himself up onto his elbows. It's not far, he's still very close, his hair falling down into his face until he tosses it back with an irritated shake of his head. Grantaire reaches for him, skims his fingers across Enjolras's mouth before he buries them in Enjolras's hair and tries to pull him back down for more.

Enjolras smiles and turns his head to brush a kiss against the heel of Grantaire's hand, but doesn't let himself be guided back in. "What do you want?" he asks, clear and direct. "Tell me, I don't want to do more than you're comfortable with."

"You couldn't." Since Enjolras won't come to him, Grantaire pushes up onto his elbows and drops a series of kisses across the line of his neck where it curves to join his shoulder.

It makes Enjolras frown, and that is the opposite of what he wanted. "That's nice to say, but I don't think it's entirely true."

"What do _you_ want?" Grantaire counters, exasperated with all this talking when there are better ways they could be spending the time.

Enjolras goes quiet a moment, and still. His eyes burn into Grantaire, eager and hopeful and wary all at once. "Can I fuck you?"

It knocks all the breath from Grantaire's lungs. "Yes."

Enjolras makes a sound. It's almost the wounded-animal sound of before, but this one's nicer, and he leans his forehead against Grantaire's shoulder and takes a few unsteady breaths. His hands slide down Grantaire's sides and he makes another sound, this time of frustration, when he reaches the waist of Grantaire's pants. 

"I should have got you naked before we got in bed," he says, a grumble like he's irritated with himself for the oversight.

He makes quick work of the fly, then pats Grantaire's hip until he pushes up off the bed so Enjolras can tug his pants down and strip them off. He works methodically, and when Grantaire's bare, Enjolras climbs off the bed to quickly strip away his own clothes. His gaze is caught on Grantaire's groin, though, and his stare's only broken when he has to pull his shirt off over his head. As soon as he's naked, too, he climbs back on the bed, pushes Grantaire down when he reaches for him, and makes room for himself between Grantaire's legs.

Grantaire's breath hitches, but he settles back to see what Enjolras means to do. He keeps his elbows beneath himself, though, lifting him up just enough that he can watch as Enjolras leans in and breathes against his skin. "Christ," Enjolras breathes, faint and to himself. And then he turns his head and his mouth is on Grantaire's cock and he has to fight to remember how to breathe.

Enjolras's mouth is warm and wet and so gentle. He works his way up Grantaire's shaft with a trail of kisses and the occasional glide of his tongue, hotter and wetter as it traces patterns across Grantaire's skin that are designed to drive him mad. Grantaire's gasping by the time Enjolras reaches the head of his cock, his elbows dropped out from beneath him, his hands sliding through Enjolras's hair as he fights the instinct to grab and direct.

"Please," he says, after a moment with only Enjolras's breath skating over him.

"You don't have to beg." Enjolras curves a hand around him and strokes him once, then follows his hand down with his mouth, engulfing Grantaire in its heat.

Grantaire wants nothing more than to watch, but he has to shut his eyes as the pleasure washes over him, so good it's almost painful, making his whole body clench and his hips flex up without conscious thought. Enjolras hums a sound around him, and the vibrations of it have Grantaire gasping, choking. He loosens his hand in Enjolras's hair with a conscious effort and slides it down to trace a reverent touch over Enjolras's lips where they're stretched around him, to press against his cheek and feel how they hollow on every upstroke.

Enjolras's hands knead Grantaire's thighs as his mouth moves over him. Grantaire tries not to push up into his mouth, wary of choking him, but as the minutes pass and the pleasure wraps tighter around him, it gets harder and harder to keep his hips from hitching up every time Enjolras swallows him down.

When Enjolras finally pulls off of him, he's breathing hard and his mouth is red. Grantaire reaches for him, hooks a hand beneath his arm and pulls at him until Enjolras climbs up the bed far enough that Grantaire can kiss him.

He bites at Enjolras's swollen lips, sucks at them, until Enjolras makes a hoarse sound against his mouth and grabs at his waist with a tight grip. He pulls away to gasp for air, already looking more than half wrecked.

It's a good look on him. Grantaire strokes a hand down the side of his face and tries to imprint it on his memory, so he won't ever forget.

"Wait," Enjolras gasps. "Just wait." He scrambles off of Grantaire and over to the nightstand beside his bed, roots around in it with increasingly frustrated noises until he finds what he wants. When he turns back, Grantaire's pushed himself upright against the headboard a little and he can't look away from the bottle and foil packet in Enjolras's hands.

Enjolras watches him a moment before he sets them down near the edge of the bed and comes crawling back to Grantaire on his knees. He throws one leg over Grantaire's so that he's kneeling over his lap, and it's good like this, they're very close, Enjolras's chest warm against Grantaire's, their hips pressed lightly together. Enjolras traces the line of his jaw and Grantaire thinks he means to kiss him, but he doesn't move in, just stays there looking at him solemnly for a moment. "I have to ask," he says, almost apologetic. "Have you done this before?"

Grantaire huffs out a breath and lets a smile curve his lips. Humans and their preoccupation with sexual prowess. "No," he says, unashamed. "Not like this. Not with your kind. I don't particularly like humans much."

He thinks about Joly and Bossuet, befriending him on his very first visit to the Musain, tearing through the streets in the middle of the night to pick him up from the Thénardiers because he asked them to, visibly worried beneath the anger as they lectured him the whole way home. He thinks of Combeferre, who was never anything but gentle with Éponine, even before he knew how badly she needed it. Who brought her tea, just to be kind. He thinks of Enjolras, Christ, _Enjolras_ who burns bright with his passion for protecting others, who gave Grantaire his pelt back without question, who hasn't touched it once since, who looked horrified when he nearly did so by accident, just in case Grantaire might think he was trying to take it back.

"Didn't," Grantaire corrects himself quietly. "I _didn't_ particularly like humans much."

And that makes Enjolras smile, slow and brilliant and so pleased. He presses in closer, skin-to-skin from shoulders to hips, and kisses Grantaire with quick, darting kisses as he gropes out with one hand and comes back with the bottle of lube. "I'll go slow," he says like he's making a promise. "Tell me if it's too much, or if it starts to feel uncomfortable."

Grantaire shakes his head, not refusal but just because _uncomfortable_ feels like an impossibility right now, with Enjolras so warm and close against him, with the drag of their skin against each other and the taste of his breath in Grantaire's mouth.

Enjolras draws away, just far enough so that he can move. He squeezes lube onto his fingertips and rubs them together a moment, then slides his hips back so he can reach down between them.

There's a breathless, agonizing moment where Enjolras is rearranging their limbs, curving a hand beneath Grantaire's knee and adjusting the angle of his legs and _not touching him_ , but then he's back, close again, breathing unevenly against Grantaire's mouth, and there's a cold touch between Grantaire's thighs that makes him flinch.

Enjolras breathes reassurances against his mouth, promises that it'll warm up, that it'll be better, but Grantaire kisses him to quiet him because _it's good_ , it's already good, and when Enjolras starts rubbing slick circles around his entrance it's impossibly better.

Enjolras works him open with careful pressure, and he's true to his promise, he goes slow, so slow it's agonizing. Grantaire grabs onto his shoulders with tight hands and pants against his mouth, letting the pleasure twist through him as Enjolras opens him up by careful degrees.

When Enjolras slides one finger into him, Grantaire's gasping. At two, he's moaning, and by the time Enjolras has coaxed three fingers into him Grantaire is breathless, slumped back against the headboard and trembling all over. He feels the coolness of the air in the room as a prickle across his skin when Enjolras climbs off his lap and slides down, kneeling between Grantaire's thighs. He bends forward, baring the gorgeous curve of his back, and takes Grantaire's cock into his mouth again as he slides his fingers out, leaves Grantaire empty and wound up and aching.

Enjolras's eager mouth almost makes up for it, and when he reaches out blindly with one hand and gropes until he's found the condom, it's worth the ache of being empty. Grantaire smooths his hands over Enjolras's hair, again and again, because touching him is grounding and he needs the connection. He feels like he'll fly apart without it.

Enjolras rolls the condom on and squeezes lube into his hand again. Grantaire's breath hitches as he watches Enjolras slick it over himself. He wraps an arm around Enjolras's back, pulls him in even as Enjolras is already coming to him, smiling a little, skimming his lips along Grantaire's jaw and the side of his neck.

"Come on," he murmurs, pulling at Grantaire's hip. "This is a terrible angle for it like this."

They shift around on the bed until Grantaire's on his back. Enjolras tucks a pillow beneath his head with a soft smile, and another beneath his hips, and then he shuffles forward and stretches out over him.

Grantaire wraps his legs around Enjolras's hips and cups the back of his neck as he reaches down to position himself, holding himself up on one arm above Grantaire. The pressure when he shifts his hips forward forces the air out of Grantaire's lungs. He wants to squeeze his eyes shut, wants to wrap his arms tight around Enjolras and press his face to his throat. But Enjolras is above him, looking down at him with the gentlest expression as he nudges forward, and Grantaire forces his eyes to stay open, so he can watch him.

The stretch of it makes him understand why Enjolras feared for his comfort. It burns, enough to make him catch his breath. But it doesn't edge over the line into painful, so Grantaire shakes his head desperately when Enjolras's expression creases with concern, and rises up to kiss him.

Enjolras breathes hard and sharp against his mouth, even as his movements remain slow and careful. He pushes in a little more, and Grantaire pushes back against him and then gasps as he takes Enjolras past the head of his cock.

Enjolras presses his face against Grantaire's shoulder, his lips moving against his skin as he breathes words Grantaire can't make out. He holds himself perfectly still, even as Grantaire tightens his hands and moves beneath him, trying to find a way to take him deeper.

"Shh." Enjolras turns his head to kiss at Grantaire's neck. "It's okay. Give it a minute."

"I'm fine. I'm fine." Grantaire's nails score across Enjolras's back, making him shudder. _"Please."_

Enjolras groans and starts to move, but he keeps to tiny movements like he's testing the waters. After a moment, when Grantaire only hums happily and lifts his hips to meet each thrust, Enjolras takes a steadying breath and pulls back a little farther, glides in a little deeper.

The pace he sets is as slow and as unshakeable as the tide, gliding out and pressing in. He gives a little grunt like he's surprised every time he bottoms out that makes Grantaire feel immeasurably fond. He holds Enjolras's face between his hands and kisses him and gasps against his mouth when the angle changes and it all turns good and bright and glorious. Warmth spreads out across his skin, wrapping around him like an embrace, like the familiar weight of his pelt on his shoulders.

His climax comes like the crest of a wave, lifting him up to heights that leave him breathless with it. It holds him there, taut and waiting, straining against Enjolras to get that last little bit closer, that last little bit higher.

And then the wave breaks and sends him tumbling, shuddering in Enjolras's arms as he gets rolled under it, then slammed by the unexpected force of it. And he's falling apart, he's drowning, his lungs are burning for air even as he gasps it in. Enjolras holds him through it, his arms tight and secure around Grantaire's back, his voice a steady murmur that guides him back up to the surface.

He holds himself absolutely still inside Grantaire, but he's still tense above him. Grantaire strokes his brows and the line of his lashes where they curve against his cheek. "Don't stop on my account."

Enjolras groans like he's dying. "You're not too sensitive?"

Grantaire tests it, lifting his hips up carefully. The movement of Enjolras inside him makes him catch his breath, but it's not bad, so he shakes his head and tightens his hands on Enjolras's back. "I want you to come, too."

Enjolras gives a choked laugh. "I'm going to, believe me. It's only going to take about a second."

It takes more than that, a dozen strokes that start as a slow, easy glide and end as something desperate. Enjolras's body shakes above him and his arms threaten to give out. Grantaire draws him down, ignoring his worried protests until Enjolras relents at last and lets Grantaire take his weight.

It's a comforting burden, the warmth of Enjolras above him, the thunder of his pulse where their chests press together. He slides out of Grantaire with a little sound like maybe his concerns about oversensitivity were borne out of personal experience, and sits up to remove the condom, tie it off, and drop it into the wastebasket beside the bed.

When he comes back, he settles down at Grantaire's side instead of on top of him. He drapes one arm over Grantaire's chest, though. Grantaire brings his hands up to rest lightly on it, so he won't move it away.

"Do you want to go now?" Enjolras asks after a moment of silence, just as Grantaire's breathing is starting to even out. Grantaire might think he was being dismissed if it weren't for the quiet way Enjolras asks it, the way his voice is very carefully even and he keeps his gaze dropped down to where Grantaire's fingers curl easily around his forearm.

Grantaire waits to reply until the silence draws Enjolras's gaze back up to him. "Do you want me to?"

Enjolras shuts his eyes and makes that pained noise that Grantaire hates. "I'm not going to ask you to stay," he says. "That's not fair to you. I trapped you here once. I want you to be free."

Grantaire thinks about his response for longer than he should. "Not just yet," he says eventually. "Morning's the best time to leave."

Enjolras nods and lowers himself down to lie at Grantaire's side. They're sharing a pillow, and his arm's still over Grantaire's stomach. He doesn't let go of it. "Can I come with you?"

"Do you want to?"

Enjolras nods. "Yes. I'd like that."

"Then yes." Grantaire turns his face in so it's pressing into Enjolras's hair against the pillow. It's been a long day for all of them, but his hair still holds the faint scent of shampoo. "I'd like it, too."

Enjolras's smile is tentative, but it feels like it warms the whole room.

*

In the dark of morning, they walk down to the beach together. Grantaire has one hand gripped in his pelt, and the other wrapped tight around Enjolras's. He guides Enjolras down the beach a ways, to where the cliffs spills down to the water and creates a high, rocky shelf they have to clamber over to reach the beach again on the other side, a small stretch of sand with no easy access that selkies have been using for years as a sheltered, private place to come ashore or to leave.

The sky's turning grey at the horizon and a dark, deep shade of blue overhead, but the stars are still out and the sun's not up properly yet, so Grantaire sits in the sand and stares out across the water.

Enjolras stands looking down at him for a moment before he sits down beside him, close enough that they touch from hip to knee.

"We don't see colors very well as seals," Grantaire says without looking at him. "Our eyes are built for detail and for movement, but in these waters, color gets muddled even just a few feet beneath the surface." He gestures out to the horizon with a jerk of his chin, where the clouds are starting to turn gold and crimson as the first brilliant sliver of sun peeks up above the cresting waves. "Might as well watch the sunrise with these eyes while I can."

Enjolras smiles a little and squeezes his hand, and sits beside him to watch the sky turn to flames in front of then.

When the sun has cleared the horizon and all the vibrant colors of sunrise have faded away to yellow and blue, Grantaire gets to his feet. Enjolras rises as well when Grantaire strips his clothing off, quick and efficient. He's standing nude in the sand in a matter of moments, and then he has to turn to Enjolras and try to think of something to say, because it seems wrong to just leave without a word.

Enjolras saves him from his struggle when he steps in and clasps Grantaire's hand and presses a chaste kiss to his mouth. "Go on," he says quietly. "You've been trapped here long enough. Go be free."

Grantaire crushes him to his chest and breathes the smell of shampoo from his hair once more. "Thank you."

He pulls away after a moment and wades out into the surf before he throws the pelt around his shoulders, so that when his body changes and his legs can't hold him anymore, he splashes down easily into the water. A twist of his spine and a powerful thrust of his tail sends speeding out away from shore, towards home, towards family, towards the dark depths that have been calling to him since the instant he set foot on dry land.


	16. Chapter 16

**Enjolras**

In the end, Enjolras doesn't tell Les Amis anything about what happened to the pelt they'd built their case around. He tells them that it isn't where he'd stored it, which is the truth, and he lets them draw their own conclusions about who might have stolen it, and how. While they rage against the Thénardiers and make dire threats about sending the police after them for burglary if nothing else, Enjolras sits in the middle of it all and marvels that he doesn't feel more guilty over deceiving his friends.

This truth isn't his to tell, and that makes it all much easier.

He's staring down at his coffee, which has gone cold and disappointing while he barely touched it, and trying to decide if it's worth getting a fresh cup or if it'll just suffer the same fate, when the chair beside his is scraped back and Combeferre drops down into it. He gives Enjolras a look that sees too much. "Grantaire didn't feel like joining us tonight?"

Enjolras swirls the coffee around his mug and remembers the lie Grantaire told, the last time he was in the Musain. "I think he's gone with Éponine, to help with her family thing."

It's not even really a lie. He did follow after Éponine, and they are with their family now. With their own kind.

Enjolras is happy for him, he really is.

Combeferre's brows lift a notch. He looks Enjolras over a moment and drops his voice to a gentle pitch. "Are you all right?"

Enjolras lets out a slow breath and shuts his eyes. If it were any of the others, they wouldn't have noticed whatever tell it was that gave him away. But he and Combeferre have known each other longer than any of the others, and they're best friends. He can never hide anything from Combeferre. "I will be, I think." He opens his eyes and gives Combeferre a crooked smile. "Are you?"

Combeferre tips his head, ceding the point. "I will be, I think," he says with a smile that's thin and dry.

Enjolras huffs a laugh and rocks his shoulder against Combeferre's. The noise of the others rises up to surround them, Courfeyrac railing about the Thénardiers, Bahorel joining in with a mutter about how nice it would be to smash their faces in with his fist. Joly looks deeply concerned by the prospect of violence and the possibility that he might end up called upon to patch up one of his friends, and the others keep chiming in occasionally as well.

For once, Enjolras doesn't have any answers. He lets them talk it out, and lets them decide amongst themselves what they want to do about this sudden setback.

 

*

Several weeks on, things are looking little better. Their case falls apart without the pelt as the lynchpin to hold it all together, and they haven't figure out how to tie it back up yet. The Thénardiers are on edge and wary after their visit, unlikely to let them back in or to make any mistakes that will give them the evidence that they need. Montparnasse has gone to ground and no matter how much asking around Les Amis do, no one has so much as seen him. They keep up their canvassing because there's little else they can do and it's important that they not feel too much like they're floundering, but even that is of little help. No one's seen any suspicious activity on the beach lately. Whatever Grantaire did before he left, it spooked the Thénardiers, and they're not conducting business locally any more, if at all. Enjolras is glad for Grantaire and glad for the selkies he calls family, but he knows better than to think that this means the Thénardiers are going to go straight for good. They'll bide their time, maybe they'll move somewhere new, and then they'll start it all up again. The case Les Amis is making is still important — but it's still stalled.

When they spend an entire meeting griping irritably at one another instead of working together, Enjolras gives a sharp sigh and declares a beach day. Normally, that would be cause for celebration amongst the group, or at least from Courfeyrac, but this time the best he gets is slightly less disgruntled expressions around the Musain's tables.

Still, they all gather on the beach the next morning. Cosette brings a cooler full of drinks, Joly brings sunblock and hounds everybody until they've all consented to be slathered in it. Courfeyrac runs around in the waves a little bit, but his heart isn't in it.

They all worked so hard, and it's falling apart in front of them. And Enjolras can't even tell them the truth about why. He sits in the sand, up in the shade with Combeferre, and fights against despair.

Combeferre sets his book down after a time, perhaps an hour, and looks at him. "Did you love him?"

Enjolras picks at a loose thread in the knee of his jeans. He's going to ruin them if he keeps it up, but he doesn't care. "Did you love her?"

"I could have." Combeferre puts a hand on his knee, not to stop him, just to get his attention. "You can keep deflecting this back onto me and Éponine if you like, but I don't think it's going to help, not in the long run."

Enjolras lets out a sudden breath, his shoulders slumping. "I'm sorry. You deserve better than that, you really do." The problem is that he can't talk about it at _all_ , not in any way that's true. And it's easier to turn Combeferre's questions back onto him than to keep figuring out ways to lie to his friends. "I was getting there, I think."

Combeferre shifts his hand from Enjolras's knee to his back, careful and comforting. "Did he not tell you why he left?"

Enjolras swallows down the painful knot in his throat and nods. "He did," he said faintly. "And it was a good reason, too."

"Well," Combeferre says after a moment. "At least you have that."

Enjolras feels all the worse for the fact that Combeferre doesn't sound bitter at all when he says it. He ought to, by rights. Enjolras knows Éponine left him without a word, without even the little bit of closure that Enjolras got from Grantaire. He wishes he could say something to make it better and give him some of that closure, but that's not his to tell, either.

He hates this. Sometimes, on his worse days, he thinks it might have been better if Grantaire had left without a word, as Éponine had. Then Enjolras could have raged, and mourned, and maybe he'd have moved on by now, instead of sitting here amongst his friends and feeling isolated because he knows the truth and can't speak it.

He knows it's not true, that he's grateful for the trust Grantaire placed in him, that he's glad to have been able to see him off. But it doesn't make the rest of it any easier.

The sun is nearly setting and the sky beginning to darken and the beach day hasn't been anywhere near the success that Enjolras had hoped when a quiet cry goes up from further down the beach.

Enjolras sits up, leaning forward to see what's caused it. Courfeyrac is standing up to his ankles in the water, one hand lifted to shield his eyes and staring out to sea. Marius comes up beside him and Courfeyrac says something and points, and Marius looks where he's indicating and then runs off to grab Cosette excitedly.

Enjolras gets to his feet and starts down the beach to see what's caught their attention. Sometimes, when they're very lucky, they see whales offshore, and this seems like that kind of excitement. This isn't the right season for the whales to be migrating, though.

"What is it?" he asks as he comes to stand by Courfeyrac, water waning over his feet.

"Look!" Courfeyrac points, and Enjolras looks.

It takes him a minute to make it out, sleek dark shapes against the darkening waves, but when he does his breath catches. _Seals_ , a bigger group of them than they've seen out here in years, and that all by itself would make everything worth it. But the seals are heading in toward the beach, and as they near, Courfeyrac's excitement turns to confusion. "What on earth are they doing?" he wonders. And then, sharp with alarm, "Oh Christ, they're going to beach themselves."

"Seals don't get trapped on land like whales or dolphins do," Enjolras says, and he wants to stride right on out to meet them but he holds himself back when the water's up to his knees and any deeper would put him at the mercy of the waves.

One of the seals makes straight for Enjolras, and it's Grantaire, it _has_ to be Grantaire. He stops right in front of Enjolras and barks, loud and sharp and _real_ , and Enjolras drops down to his knees in the water and presses his hands to his mouth to hold back a bubble of hysterical laughter. He's so happy his chest feels like it's going to burst, and tears prick the backs of his eyes, and when he reaches a hand out and hesitates, afraid it's some sort of fever dream delusion, the seal pushes his head into Enjolras's palm like a giant cat.

"Take it off," Enjolras says, "oh please, Grantaire, take it off. I can't hug a seal, people will think I'm mad."

The seal gives a quieter bark, and it sounds so much like Grantaire's irritated huff that Enjolras can't bear it. His hands shake as the seal rolls onto his back and scrapes his clawed flippers across his belly. They catch and dig in and Enjolras grimaces because it's a little bit gruesome, at least until the fur parts to reveal pale, human skin beneath rather than a raw wound.

Grantaire peels the pelt off like it's a poorly-fitting jacket, too tight to come off easily, but after a moment he comes spilling out and he's on his feet, soaked and naked and smiling a little uncertainly and Enjolras chokes back a cry and throws his arms around his neck.

Grantaire catches him, and holds him, and Enjolras presses his face to his shoulder and wonders how he's ever going to be able to let go. But in the end it's easy to unwind his arms and step back — not far enough to put any appreciable distance between them, and with his hands gripping Grantaire's tightly, but enough to look into his eyes and ask, "What are you doing here?"

All around them on the beach, the other selkies are taking off their pelts, too. Courfeyrac gapes and cries, "Shut the fuck up!" like it's the best thing he's ever seen, and Joly is squinting at the one nearest him like he's trying to figure out the biomechanics of it all. Éponine is there and Combeferre has come stumbling down the beach to her but they're frozen now with several yards of sand between them, and Enjolras spares all of them little more than the briefest of glances because Grantaire is here, real and alive and _here_ , and he frees one of his hands from Enjolras's to lift it to his face and brush a thumb across his cheek.

"It's part of the legend, you know," he says softly. "If a human sheds seven tears into the ocean, it'll summon their selkie back to them."

It startles a burst of laughter out of Enjolras. "Shut up, I was not crying," he says, gruff to hide the fact that he very nearly was doing just that.

The hint of a teasing smile flirts with the corners of Grantaire's mouth, but he sobers at Enjolras's words and grazes his thumb over his cheek again, as though to wipe away the tears that Enjolras didn't shed. "Good," he says quietly, seriously. "I wouldn't want you to cry over me."

Enjolras draws a breath that's unsteady and a little wet. "Grantaire, why? Why did you come back?"

"I'm here to help." He tilts his head to indicate the others. "All of us are, actually. I figured, I took away your most important piece of evidence, it was only fair to provide some eyewitness testimony in return, right?"

Enjolras looks out over them, nearly two dozen of them crowding the beach now. Éponine and Combeferre are embracing, clutching each other tight. Joly has found a selkie who seems to be at least tolerant of his endless series of enthusiastic questions. Cosette is offering her bathing suit coverup to a young girl who seems a little uncomfortable with her nudity, and most of the rest of Les Amis are striking up conversations with the selkies, introducing themselves, doing an admirable job of not reacting to the fact that this has abruptly turned into a nudist beach. Enjolras's heart is so full it feels like it's going to burst.

He looks back at Grantaire and he wants to hold on to him forever. Instead, he makes himself say, "You didn't have to come back for this, you know."

"The Thénardiers are stealing from _us_. Trust me, we want them brought to justice even more than you do." His voice gentles, turns soft and intimate. "They came for this. I came for you."

Enjolras squeezes his eyes shut. It's too much. He's not this strong. "Grantaire—"

_"Enjolras."_ Grantaire's hands tighten on his. "You said you wanted me to be free."

"I do!"

Enjolras feels him lean in, feels the warmth of him against his skin. "You want me to know I'm free to leave." Grantaire doesn't kiss him, just leans their foreheads together and holds on tight to his hands. "But it's not really freedom unless I'm also free to stay, is it?"

All the air rushes out of Enjolras's lungs. He opens his eyes and looks at him. "Of course you can. Of _course_. Whenever you want, as long as you want. But you can always leave, always, I don't want you to think that—"

"I know," Grantaire says, and cups his face in his hands and kisses him. "I think maybe this time I'd like to try sticking around for a while."


	17. Epilogue

It's a few more months before the police department have investigated to their satisfaction and filed charges against the Thénardiers for multiple counts of poaching and theft. The day Officer Lamarque calls them to tell them the arrests have been made, all of Les Amis skip their classes or call in sick to work for a day of celebration at the beach.

Enjolras walks along the beach with Grantaire, hand in hand, both of them barefoot and getting their feet wet. He's got his pelt folded up beneath his arm, and Enjolras glances at it as they walk, then out where some of the selkies are swimming in the distant waves, their barking cries filling the air. "Do you want to join them?" he asks quietly. "I don't mind."

Grantaire looks out to his people, and Enjolras looks to his own. Cosette and Marius sitting on a blanket together gazing out at the ocean like they're the only ones on the beach. Courfeyrac racing through the surf like he always does, shrieking like a little kid, until a seal comes up out of the water unexpectedly and knocks him into it. Courfeyrac comes up sputtering and laughing like it's the best time he's had in a long time.

Joly is sitting with a selkie woman who's been remarkably tolerant at letting him trying to figure out the science behind their kind, while Bossuet keeps their girlfriend Musichetta entertained by making sand castles that only ever get half-built before he makes some slip of the hand and sends them crumbling back to the beach.

Éponine and Combeferre are out in the water, both of them up to their waists, and Combeferre is looking uncertain as Éponine laughs and tries to coax him out farther. The last time they had a beach day she managed to convince him to try a little doggy paddle through the waves, and they all held their breath and didn't watch for fear that too much attention would make Combeferre nervous and he'd abandon the water for good.

Enjolras is glad to see the swimming lessons paying off. Every day, Combeferre grows a little more comfortable in the water. He's glad to see the other selkies there with them too, playing amongst Les Amis like they're all friends, or on their way to it. And he's glad to have Grantaire there with him, glad every single day because he knows it's always a choice, and it's not one that Enjolras takes for granted.

"No," Grantaire says with a squeeze to Enjolras's hand, and it takes him a moment to remember that he'd asked a question. "Maybe in a little while, but not right now." He pulls Enjolras in against him and kisses the side of his head as they walk. "Right now, I'm exactly where I want to be."

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] The Lonely Sea and Sky](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1401271) by [RsCreighton](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RsCreighton/pseuds/RsCreighton)




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